A handy-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by W. Bathurst Woodman and Charles Meymott Tidy.

Date:
1877
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handy-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by W. Bathurst Woodman and Charles Meymott Tidy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    1114/1268 (page 1078)
    have seen, however, in the case of incised wounds, that blood may coagu- late when the wound is inflicted on an amputated limb ten minutes after removal from the body. The blood in some forms of death coagulates very slowly, or not at all [scurvy, some cases of purpura, typhus fever, some cases of anaemia, death from nervous shock, rupture to the heart, &c.]. Donne [“ Cours de Microscopic,” page 52] states that the blood may remain fluid from four to twelve hours after death, and he thinks it seldom coagulates until nearly four hours, although the same blood, in a shallow vessel exposed to air, might coagulate in a few minutes [*eep. 580 to 582], Dr. Taylor remarks that in general, contusions produced during life, and in which the effused blood remains liquid, may be recognised by the extent of the effusion. If there is a large quantity of liquid blood, and no vein ruptured, effusion must have taken place in life. Again, there is swelling of parts if the blows have been given in life. For Dr. Christison’s experiments see the “ Edinburgh Med. and Slug. Journal,” No. 99, p. 247,etseq. Changes of colour will only take place in the dead as the result of putrefaction, except in the case of the retarded ecchymoses before alluded to. Thus Dr. Taylor quotes the case of a young man who was seen to strike one of his companions in June, 1870 [loc. cit., p. 463]. The receiver of the blow died instantly. On a post-mortem examination the mark of a bruise was seen over the sixth and seventh ribs on the right side. About a fortnight before this blow was struck deceased met with an accident—a heavy box fell on his right side, knocked him senseless and nearly killed him. Dr. Guppy of Falmouth, who reports the case, says the question was raised, whether the ecchymosed mark on the side was owing to the blow just before death, or to the one fourteen days before. [“ Lancet,” 1870, 2, p. 35.] On the authority of Casper it was stated at the trial that the ecchymosis could not have arisen from the last blow, because there was not time for its appearance before death. [See Casper’s “ Handbuch der gericht. Med.,” vol. i., p. 121.] But Casper has himself admitted that violence applied to a recently dead body will produce ecchymosis. Dr. Taylor justly says the fourteen days’ bruise would have shown some changes of colour at its margin. He quotes the case of the Duchess de Praslin [August, 1870], who was assassinated by her husband, and attacked whilst asleep in bed. The number of her wounds, which amounted to thirty, showed that she had strongly resisted, but the whole struggle must have been less than half an hour. Yet, on inspection, there were numerous ecchymoses, which had resulted from the violent use of a bruising instrument. [“ Annales d’Hygiene,” 1847, tom. ii., p. 377.] The following case is also to the point. In 1864 a young gipsy-woman fell under a waggon wheel; it was said not to have passed over her body. She was pregnant, and the injury lacerated her right kidney, tearing it almost in half. When examined half an hour after, there were no bruises on the body. She lived in all about six hours, and no marks of bruising [ecchymosis] appeared until the next day-— nearly twenty-four hours. The usual colour-changes went on till the post-mortem examination took place [about four days after]. There are, however, not a few cases on record where severe contusions have pro- duced no mark on the outside of the body. Of this Dr. layloi gius numerous cases [pp. 461 to 479]. We shall quote some further on. A careful consideration of the subject brings us to the conclusion, t a it is often extremely difficult to say, from the mere appearance of e