THE THREE VITAL ORGANS.--Death is produced by the stoppage of the action of any one of the three organs--the heart, the lungs, or the brain. They have, therefore, been termed the "Tripod of Life." Really, however, as Huxley has remarked, "Life has but two legs to stand upon." If respiration and circulation be kept up artificially, the removal of the brain will not produce death. [Footnote: When death really does take place, _i. e._, when the vital organs are stopped, it is noticeable that the tissues do not die for some time thereafter. If suitable stimulants be applied, as the galvanic battery, transfusion of blood, etc., the muscles may be made to contract, and many of the phenomena of life be exhibited. Dr. Brown- Sequard thus produced muscular action in the hand of a criminal, fourteen hours after his execution.]
WONDERS OF THE HEART.--The ancients thought the heart to be the seat of love. There were located the purity and goodness as well as the evil passions of the soul. [Footnote: Our common words, hearty, large-hearted, courage (_cor_, the heart), are remains of this fanciful theory.] Modern science has found the seat of the mental powers to be in the brain. But while it has thus robbed the heart of its romance, it has revealed wonders which eclipse all the mysteries of the past. This marvelous little engine throbs on continually at the rate of one hundred thousand beats per day, forty millions per year, often three billions without a single stop. It is the most powerful of machines. "Its daily work is equal to one third that of all the muscles. If it should expend its entire force in lifting its own weight vertically, it would rise twenty thousand feet in an hour." [Footnote: "The greatest exploit ever accomplished by a locomotive, was to lift itself through less than one eighth of that distance." Vast and constant as is this process, so perfect is the machinery, that there are persons who do not even know where the heart lies until disease or accident reveals its location.] Its vitality is amazing. The most tireless of organs while life exists, it is one of the last to yield when life expires. So long as a flutter lingers at the heart, we know the spark of being is not quite extinguished, and there is hope of restoration. During a life such as we sometimes see, it has propelled half a million tons of blood, yet repaired itself as it has wasted, during its patient, unfaltering labor. The play of its valves and the rhythm of its throb have never failed until, at the command of the great Master Workman, the "wheels of life have stood still." [Footnote: Our brains are seventy-five- year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection. Ticktack! Ticktack! go the wheels of thought; our will can not stop them, they can not stop themselves; sleep can not stop them; madness only makes them go faster; death alone can break into the case, and, seizing the ever-swinging pendulum which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.--HOLMES.]