A dissertation on infanticide, in its relations to physiology and jurisprudence / By William Hutchinson.

  • Hutchinson, William, active 1820.
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dissertation on infanticide, in its relations to physiology and jurisprudence / By William Hutchinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    When ecchymosis is superficial, and the sub- ject outlives its production, the part presents a spot of a red or bluish colour; this spot, which is formed by the blood infiltrated into the cellular tissue, soon assumes a deep livid or leaden hue ; it then, after a few days, becomes, successively, violet, yellowish, and terminates by a pale ci- tron colour. It is seven or eight days, generally, before it disappears. The circumference of the spot is always of a less deep hue than the centre. There is commonly, too, some degree of elevation of the skin corresponding to them. When they have been produced by any thing grasping or twining about the part, there is usually some de- gree of folding or puckering of the skin. The above characters will clearly distinguish contusions made during life from those occurring characters of after death; the latter, which, for the sake of contusions ef- . . footed after distinction, might be termed bruises, are of a deep or purplish brown colour, attended with no diffused infiltration of blood in the cellular tissue surrounding the spot precisely injured; and there is no elevation of the skin corresponding to them. The skin may lie in loose large folds over them, but it is not puckered up in small wrinkles, re- quiring some continued effort to remove them, as it often is in contusions effected during life. There is commonly no coagulated blood lying without the vessels; but this circumstance will be regulated precisely by the same causes as