Miscellany. [Volume: 2, Issue: 4, November, 1860, pp. 240-248]

240

THE DENTAL COSMOS.

has originated. From cases, however, which have fallen under my own
observation, and from a consideration of all the circumstances, I cannot
entertain a doubt that, if we could obtain accurate statistics on the subject, we should find that the value of life in inveterate smokers is considerably below the average. Nor is this opinion in any degree contradicted by
the fact that there are individuals who in spite of the inhalation of
tobacco smoke live to be old, and without any material derangement of
the health; analogous exceptions to the general rule being met with in
the case of those who have indulged too freely in the use of spirituous
and fermented liquors."
MISCELLANY.
In the concluding lecture of the course on experimental pathology in
the Mied. Times and Gaz., Sept. 29, M. C. BERNARD thus gives his views
"on the connection existing between physiological phenomena and the
physical properties of the tissues which produce them. It may be correctly asserted in a general manner, that the physiological properties of
muscles, nerves, and all other tissues, coexist with physical and chemical
phenomena of a peculiar nature, and that a direct relation is to be found
between the degree of intensity which each class of properties exhibits.
Shortly after death the vital characteristics of the tissues disappear along
with their physical and chemical properties; thus, in muscles, the electric
current fails at the moment when contractility is extinguished; and in
nerves the electro-tonic power disappears at the same moment as physiological excitability. But although we are tempted to view this connection
between physical and physiological phenomena in the light of the necessary relations between cause and effect, I rather believe it to be a mere
coincidence. It must not be supposed that the vital properties persist as
long as the physical and chemical phenomena have not disappeared. A
remarkable instance of this reciprocal independence is afforded by the following experiment:-A rabbit being killed by the section of the medulla
oblongata, both nervous excitability, muscular irritability, and the electric
muscular current disappear by degrees, and are totally extinct a few hours
after death. But when the animal is poisoned with upas a very different
result is observed; the normal irritability of the muscles disappears
twenty-five or thirty seconds after death, while the electric current persists during four or five hours. In the same manner the alkaline reaction
of muscles is not inseparably connected with their contractile power, nor
the electro-tonic state in nerves, with the property of transmitting the
impulse of the will. Far be it from us to maintain that the disappearance of the vital properties of any given tissue is not in all cases the
result of a material change; we only intend to show that in more cases
than one that change is yet unknown and must be sought for in a different
direction; the physical and chemical properties hitherto known to exist
in our tissues are the inseparable attendants of the vital action, but do not
appear entirely to create its powers."
The following case, in illustration of the capacity for reunion of organic
structure after complete separation, is given (ibid.) upon the authority of
the Bull. de Thbrap.: "M. Azam relates an additional case in proof of
the desirableness of attempting to secure the reunion of separated parts.
A man, while fashioning a piece of wood by means of a very sharp
hatchet, chopped off an oblique slice of the index finger, three centimetres