Volume 1

Text-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by Arthur P. Luff.

  • Arthur P. Luff
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Text-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by Arthur P. Luff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    time having ehxpsed for previous relaxation. The convulsant poisons, by their action on the muscles, cause rigor mortis to set in, as a rule, early after death, and in animals destroyed by strychnine it usually sets in with great rapidity. Early rigor mortis has also been noticed in the bodies of human beings dying after violent convulsions produced by strychnine or by hydrophobia. Brown-Sequard found, in the case of a woman who died of. hydrophobia after violent con- vulsions, that rigor mortis had set in within the first horn- after death, and that it had ceased before the end of the tenth hour. Paltauf,^ in connection with some experiments undertaken to show the causal connection between rigor mortis and deaths from certain poisons, found that curare always considerably delays the occurrence of rigor mortis, whereas strychnine, caffeine, picrotoxine, camphor, and the ammonium salts accele- rate it. To study the influence of the nervous system at the time of occurrence of the rigor mortis produced by the last- mentioned poisons, Paltauf divided the nerves and spinal cord of the poisoned animal, and found that the more a muscle had been stimulated by the poison the sooner did rigor mortis occur. (d) Mode of death.—As a rule, when death occurs from a lingering disease accompanied by great prostration, rigor mortis sets in quickly and disappears quickly. This may occur in death from phthisis, cholera, typhus fever, typhoid fever, hydrophobia, scm^vy, and occasionally in chronic Bright's disease. Although, as a rule, rigor mortis, when it comes on speedily after death, disappears rapidly, yet it does not follow that such is always the case; for i]i some cases, wliere death has been preceded by powerful convulsions, rigidity may come on rapidly, and may continue for some days. In cases of death from very lingering diseases, rigor mortis may last so short a time as to pass unnoticed, so that it has been stated that rigor mortis did not occur after death from those diseases. Such, however, is not the case; rigor mortis has occurred, but has lasted for a very brief period. John ' Wiener Mcdicinische Presse, 1802. 1) 2