Death and sudden death / by P. Brouardel and F. Lucas Benham.

  • Paul Brouardel
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Death and sudden death / by P. Brouardel and F. Lucas Benham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    certain that some conditions exist which may be styled the state of apparent death. We might definitely choose some sign as a distinction between life and death, and use it in a conventional way; but I am very much afraid that, how- ever elastic this convention might be, whatever sign might be proposed to denote the moment of death, this sign and this convention will always remain useless in doubtful cases, and we are obliged to acknowledge that we have no sign or group of signs sufficient to determine the moment of death with scientific certainty in all cases. [The converse condition of apparent life in a dead body is not without interest and importance. The late Sir B. W. Richardson* enumerates such conditions as are likely to be met with, and to give rise to doubt, as follows : 1. Local or partial change of colour of the surface of the body to a bright red—e.g., in a case of supposed scarlet fever. This is due to oxidation of the blood hypost-mortem interchange of gases. 2. Retention of warmth, as a rule from arrest of circula- tion in the cerebral centres, and which persists after rigor mortis has set in. 3. Muscular movements, as in death from cholera. The movements are most often displayed in the right leg or hands, and may last for an hour. 4. Retention of a lifelike expression, most often observed in children. 5. Prolonged preservation from decomposition. This is sometimes postponed by large and frequent doses of alcohol administered during the fatal illness.] * ‘Transactions of the Medical Society of London,’ 1889, vol. xii., p. 100 el seq.
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