A manual of medical jurisprudence for Bengal and the North-Western Provinces / by Norman Chevers.

  • Chevers, Norman, 1818-1886.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence for Bengal and the North-Western Provinces / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    is not generally taken of the rapidity with -which decomposi- tion advances in a body wrapped in a sheet of matting; hurried along some 30 or 40 miles through a burning atmosphere, at from two to ten days after death. Judging by my own expe- rience at different stations, a body can seldom be sent in, from a remote part of the district, within less than two or three days after death. Under these circumstances, its very appearance, when freed from its swathings, is almost appalling, even to the initiated :—bloated in every part, almost to burst- ing, with its limbs widely separated by sheer gaseous disten- tion ; the eyes dissolving and forced from their sockets; the tongue enormously swollen and protruded between the teeth, through which the gases of putrefaction bubble with loud crepitations; the skin every where separated, displaying the white surface beneath, marbled with gangrenous blotches and veiniugs, and preyed upon by gigantic ants and beetles of sinister aspect, and by maggots, which roll forth in mea- sures-full when the cloths are unloosed. A body of this kind offers no very safe or encouraging field for the morbid anatomist's researches. It is true that, in all such cases, the Civil Surgeon is at liberty to decline making an internal examina- tion ; still, if furnished with a distinct clue, he would often be able to throw a light upon the cause of death, suffi- cient for the purposes of justice, even when decomposition had advanced considerably. Too great stress needs not be laid upon the rule of avoiding to send in bodies, when it is even certain that they will reach the sudder station in an extremely putrid condition, as it will frequently happen that even a single glance at the most decomposed corpse will reveal much to the experienced eye. For instance; a body was sent to my hospital in a very advanced state of putrefaction; the history was not furnished. I was about to desire that it , might be buried, when I was struck with something unusual