Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/391

Rh indicating the presence of reduced cruorine or myochrome, the red colouring-matter of muscle. Consequently, there are grounds for believing, that the painful contractions of the muscles during life may have been due to diminished, if not altogether suspended, oxidation. While admitting this as a probable cause of the cramps and state of the muscles after death from cholera, we cannot overlook the fact, that these conditions must be very much influenced by the loss of water, which the muscles, as well as other tissues of the body, undergo in cholera. And it seems by no means improbable, as Professor Pacini remarks, that the muscular movements noticed after death from cholera, may be due to the water of the tissues passing by endosmosis into the empty vessels, and thus supplying one of the principal elements necessary to organic life. It will be advisable, however, to discuss this point more fully in the next section, confining ourselves here to a simple statement of facts; and so with regard to

Temperature.—A rise in temperature occurs shortly before and after death from cholera. The thermometer often rises from 94° in the axilla to 98°, or even 100°, a few hours after the person expires, and the corpse may continue at this temperature for some time; in one case in which the body was kept in sawdust its temperature was retained for no less than three days.

As I shall subsequently attempt to show, this rise in the temperature of the body after death from cholera is probably best accounted for upon the same principles