Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/545

Rh The respiratory movements coincide generally with the heart's action: all respiration ceasing, the heart never continues to act longer than five minutes, and these movements can be noted by the non-medical observer, by placing a piece of looking-glass, or a dish filled with water or mercury, upon the chest, and allowing the light to be reflected upon the surface; the slightest movement will result in oscillations.

A common mistake of death for a supposititious trance state is the continued or increased warmth of the body, which is so remarkable in some cases; there are instances where days have elapsed before the body was allowed to be put in the ground, because of its continued warmth, and of the absence of the corpse pallor; and again it has been frequently noted in cases of death from cholera that bodies, which at the time of death were moderately cool, have developed a temperature of 87° Fahr. and of 92° Fahr., and in cases of death from injuries to the nervous system even a much higher temperature has been reached—evidences, as Taylor puts it, of some latent vital power or chemical force still lingering about the circulating system.

While the trance state is a source of mystery and wonderment to the popular mind, the positive statements of a change of position in a body, and even of the birth of children after death, are something more tangible and real, and carry their convictions in a more decided manner. Yet these phenomena in many cases are accounted for in the most natural way. There is inherent in the muscular tissue of our bodies a certain irritability or tonicity—vitality, perhaps, is a good expression—of the muscle itself, which is independent of the brain, nerves, circulation, or respiration, in that it continues to exhibit its function—that of muscular contraction—for an appreciable time after death has abolished these forces, and physiologists, by supplying the muscles with nutrition, such as the injection of defibrinated blood, have been able to excite this irritability so late as sixteen hours after death. It is this irritability which results in the rigor mortis, or rigidity of death, and which sets in generally within five or six hours, lasting from sixteen to twenty-four hours. With this rigidity is a muscular contraction usually not resulting in any change of position of the body; but the flexor muscles exhibit a greater tendency to contraction than the extensors, and there are instances where this contraction has been quite marked, resulting of course in a change of position. If a body be not properly laid out and placed in a coffin in the cramped position in which rigor mortis has set it, there will necessarily be some change of position when, at the end of the time mentioned, this condition passes off and a relaxation ensues. In one case of death from cholera, half an hour after complete cessation of circulation and respiration, the muscles of the arms underwent spontaneously various motions of contraction and relaxation, continuing for upward of an hour.

The fact of finding a dead child lying by the side of its mother in