he was called to view the body floating. A person of temperate habits will bleach very quick; those who have been inveterate drinkers never will bleach. "John Osborn, called by plaintiffs. He testified that he was coroner of Albany county three years. Had occasion frequently to reclaim drowned bodies. Had known bodies to come up in two days, others not in several months. Had a case of an Irish girl. She had been drowned some two or three days; it might have been four. Had another case of a man, McCarregan, an Irish auctioneer, who rose in four or five days. "Silas M. Benton, called for plaintiffs. He testified that he was acting coroner in 1847, 1848, and 1849, in New Haven, Conn. He knew a case of a person, whom he saw on Friday, was missed on Saturday, and found floating in the water on Sunday. The man was a German, and a baker by trade. "The verdict of the jury was in favor of the plaintiffs.” The same question was largely discussed on the trial of Spencer Cowper, for the murder of Sarah Stout.17 In two cases mentioned by Dr. Taylor,18 bodies floated in a much shorter time. In one a woman, who was seen on the banks of a river at 11:30 in the evening, was found drowned at 8 o'clock in the morning. The body was floating on the water, with the face downwards. In another, in the month of December, a factory girl fell into a river while walking along the bank in the evening. The body was found floating on the surface of the water the following morning. The bodies in these cases were clothed, and this, it is supposed, may have rendered them more buoyant. 380. Putrefaction in water-soaked bodies.-The process of putrefaction of bodies lying in the water, as usually described, is that, while the body remains in the water, putrefaction goes on more slowly than in cases where the body is exposed to the air; but, after the body is removed from the water, decomposition goes on much more rapidly than in other cases, and shows first in the head and neck. There is a rapid and marked swelling of the tissues, most evident in the face, which, in a few hours, becomes so bloated that it can scarcely be recognized. The tissues of the scrotum, too, increase three or four times in volume in as many hours after the removal of the body from the water, where it has lain for several days. Vibert states19 that if a person is "Am. Journ. Med. Sci., July, 1853, P. 263. 17 Burke's Trials of the Aristocracy, 18 Med. Jur., 5th ed., p. 696. 10 Vibert, Précis de Méd. Lég., p. 158. dro:vned while bathing, or, at least, while wearing bathing trunks, that within three or four hours after the admission of the body to the morgue it is impossible to remove the trunks from the body except by cutting them off. This enormous swelling seems to be due to the development of gases in the subcutaneous tissues, with emphysema. This gas is often inflammable. 381. Course of maceration in the water.- The maceration of the skin, due to the water, shows itself in the falling out of the hair; first on the vertex, giving the appearance of baldness; but the scalp shows the follicles from which the hair has fallen, which look like pinholes in the skin. The maceration of the skin on the hands and feet also is characteristic. Vibert gives the following table as showing the rate of development of the maceration of the skin of the hands in summer on a moderately warm day. After five or six hours the skin is pale and in ridges on the fingers. In three to four days this pale, folded condition of the skin has extended to the palms of the hands. In six to eight days the skin appears much thicker, and white as chalk. In two weeks the skin has commenced to separate from the deeper tissues. In winter the changes are much less rapid. The progressive changes that take place in the body if it is left in the water to follow its own course may be described roughly as follows: After the lapse of three to ten days the development of gas becomes so great as to cause the body to float; and in the course of the second week the skin becomes emphysematous, the cuticle loose, and the parts of the body that are above water acquire tints of green, blue, and brown, and become dry and parchment-like. If the body has rolled about in the water, as will be the case where the current is rapid, these changes will be more gradual. If the weather be cool, few changes worthy of note take place during the next six or seven weeks. But about the third or fourth month the skin has become so much eroded in various places, but especially over the inguinal region, that perforations will be found, leading to the cavities of the body. In consequence the gases generated by decompositio escape, and the body sinks again. The skin and the muscular tissue become transformed into incrustations of adipocere by the uniting of the fat with the calcium and magnesium salts. The bones are so loosely held together that portions of the skeleton are apt to be separated. Littlejohn considers20 these classical descriptions of these processes of decomposition in water as following the conditions in fresh 20 Littlejohn, Edinb. Med. Journ., 1903, N. S., Vol. XIII., p. 123. water. He described the conditions found in salt water as being essentially different in three points: 1. The exposed soft parts are very rapidly destroyed, not by putrefaction, but by fish and crabs. The latter, especially, seem to cause a great deal of destruction. He finds the whole of the bones of the face to be picked as clean as anatomical specimens in the course of a few days, while the protected parts of the body remain in the early stages of decomposition. 2. The slow putrefaction of the body, due to the facts that the body lies in purer water, that the salt tends to preserve the tissues, and that there is a more rapid production of adipocere. 3. The great frequency of injuries, due to the beating of the body against the rocks or against a stony bottom by the waves. The wounds so produced, when fresh, even though post-mortem, show a pink color, possibly due to the action of the salt of the water on the tissues. The skin also is often bright red or pink. He cites several cases of submersion for equal lengths of time in fresh and salt water that have come under his observation, showing the entire difference in the appearance of the two. The case with the longest submersion in salt water that he describes with a known period of submersion is that of a suicide who drowned himself in December, and whose body was recovered in May, a period of over five months. The bones of the face were bare, the scalp turned to adipocere. The rest of the body was remarkably fresh. The skin was pale green and intact, except at the site of a hole in the clothes over the leg, where the tissues had been eaten (probably by crabs) down to the bone and muscle. There was no putrefaction or emphysema, and the scrotum was not distended. The skin of the hands and feet was detachable as a cast. On the pleura and in the tissue of the lungs there were deposits of numerous clear crystals, some as large as a cherry. The stomach was in as good a state of preservation as in bodies that have been dead but a few days. The intestines were normal in appearance, the liver was slightly tinged with green, and the flesh of the thighs appeared to be undergoing transformation into adipocere. Before opening the abdomen there was a slight odor, which was much more marked on opening the abdomen; but the odor was not very offensive. The gas that escaped was not inflammable. These findings seem to be characteristic of the condition that may be expected in bodies that have been submerged in salt rather than in fresh water. Hoenig reports21 the recovery, after forty-one years, "Hoenig, Berliner klin. Wochenschr.. 1890, p. 1,212. of several well-preserved bodies that had been thrown into a salt well at Saltzburg. 382. Time in the water. The time which a body has lain in the water cannot be determined with any precision after the process of putrefaction has once commenced.22 The rapidity and character of the changes which it undergoes vary according to the cex, age, habit of body, temperature of the water and the air, depth of the water, quality of the water (whether fresh or salt, stagnant or running), the attacks of fish, birds and beasts of prey, and finally, whether the body is clothed or not. Dévergie gives the following table of the sequence of events in a cadaver left in the water all one winter:23 3 to 5 days: Cooling and freezing of the body, skin becomes pale. 4 to 8 days: Joints supple, skin natural color, palms of hands pale. 8 to 12 days: Flaccidity of all parts, back of hands pale, face blanched, and of a different color from the rest of the body. 2 weeks: Face slightly puffed, red in places, greenish tinge over sternum, epidermis of hands and feet white, and beginning to pucker. 1 month: Face reddish brown, eyelids and lips green; reddish brown patch surrounded by green on the anterior surface of the stomach; skin of palms and soles white, thick, folded. 2 months: Face brown, swollen, hair loose; epidermis of hands and feet in large part detached, nails still adherent. 212 months: Epidermis and nails of hands detached, nails of feet still attached, red discoloration of the subcutaneous tissues of the neck and parts around the trachea and thorax, partial saponification of the cheeks and chin, and superficially of the nipples, groins, and anterior parts of the thighs. 32 months: Destruction of part of the hairy scalp, eyelids, and nose, partially of the face, upper part of the neck, and thighs, destruction of the skin on various parts of the body, epidermis and nails of the hands and feet completely gone. 412 months: Almost complete saponification of the fatty parts of the face, neck, groins, anterior part of the thighs, calcareous deposits on thighs, beginning saponification of the anterior part of the brain, calvarium denuded and beginning to be very brittle; opaque condition of most of the hairy skin, associated with its destruction. In summer the changes would be much more rapid. Dévergie esti Recently Revensdorf has undertaken to determine the time that has elapsed between death and the finding of the body. For his results, see § 433, post. 23 Dévergie, Méd. Lég., 3d éd., Vol. II., p. 520. |