On life and death : four lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain / by William S. Savory.

  • Savory, William Scovell, 1826-1895.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On life and death : four lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain / by William S. Savory. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    rigidity before general death has supervened. . “ In a man,” says Bro wn-Sequ ard, “ who died at the Hopital dn Gros-Caillou at Paris, in the | summer of 1849, cadaveric rigidity became evi- '] dent within three minutes after the last breath- ' ing, and while the heart was still beating twenty times in a minute, i.e., while the man was still ' alive, if life is considered to persist so long as the heart beats. These beatings ceased only three minutes and a half after cadaveric rigidity had i shewn itself everywhere. A quarter of an hour afterwards there was no trace of cadaveric rigidity; d and in less than an hour after death signs of putre- ; faction had appeared in the limbs. This man died of exhaustion after a prolonged typhoid fever.” j Kussmaul and Tenner state, in their monograph on epileptiform convulsions from hemorrhage, . that “ It is sometimes observed, after the arteries of the neck have been tied, that the muscles off; the trunk perish, and take on the rigor mortis before the action of the left heart is extinct. , Hence the left heart is not always the primum moriens among the muscular organs.” This rapid