Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/349

 could not be registered on the ordinary clinical thermometer. There was constant feeling of chilliness.

The autopsy discovered the lungs completely filled with an exudation of serous fluid, a condition comparable to that in croupous pneumonia, and one that was the immediate cause of death. The body, for several weeks, had been blotched or sinused beneath the surface of the skin, the dilated veins showing a circulation obstructed, presumably in the liver. This symptom is always present in cases of cirrhosis or hardening of the liver, and the latter organ on examination was found in an advanced stage of atrophic cirrhosis. The stomach held but eight fluid ounces, and it could hold no more, for its outside muscular coat was in a permanent state of contraction, and the mucus coats were very much thickened, making the whole organ at least one inch in depth of wall. As a result of the contraction of the outside coating of the stomach it had become elongated into a tube, and its normal capacity was much diminished. The duodenum and the upper three feet of the small intestine were dilated so that the lumen was three