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 The appearance of wounds inflicted during life will vary according to the length of time the subject has survived. If death takes place immediately, they will present red and bloody surfaces, with ecchymosis. Should life have lingered for some hours, their edges will be somewhat tumid and retracted, and the surrounding skin will display a reddish appearance; clots of blood may also exist in them, and these will be found to adhere to their surfaces. In those cases in which several days elapse before death, they may appear bedewed with purulent matter. Dr. Hutchinson very justly remarks that wounds, made when the circulation has ceased, and the body become cold; and when the blood has coagulated in the vessels, and the muscles have become rigid, may be known to have been inflicted after death by the pallid appearance of their surfaces, and by the total absence of tumefaction and retraction; such wounds, moreover, never contain any adherent clots of blood, and there is no surrounding ecchymosis. These characters may not perhaps be quite so distinct, where the violence has been effected immediately after death, while the body is still warm, the blood fluid, and the muscles endowed with contractility; yet in this latter case there will neither appear tumefaction, nor ecchymosis; and the blood, which may have oozed from the divided surfaces, will remain fluid, or form clots not adherent to them.

Contusions, effected during life, are always accompanied with more or less of ecchymosis; and, if produced by severe external violence, the skin will necessarily be involved in the injury. When ecchymosis is superficial, and the subject outlives its course, its progress and decline present highly characteristic phenomena; at first the injured surface presents a