Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1884-05-02

every limb and other parts of the Nodv
where there r muscles. Is the Stiffness
which appears on the battlefield and
sometimes elsewhere Immediately after
death, nothing but . sudden interven-
ton of cadaveric rigidity?
Those who know the law I have es-
tablished as regards the rapidity or de-
lay in the appearance of cadaveric
rigidity after death (see my Croonian
Lecture in the Proceedings Of the ROYAL
Society for 1861 will find it evident
that in most of the cases of conserve
ton of attitudes after death which Ihaye
mentioned the circumstances were
favorable to the rapid apparition of
post-mortem rigidity. Still, even in the
best of those circumstances, cadaveric
rightly could not have appeared soon
enough to allow Of the conservation of
an attitude anterior to death. This is o
sufficient reason to decide that the fact
we have to. explain is not due to the
sudden ~supervention of cadaveric stiff
ness. But how, then, are we to explain
that fact?
Some experiments, the details Of
which ] cannot give here, have shown
me that it is a fixed contraction, q per-
sistent tonic muscular action similar to
that which occurs during life, which
then is produced. At the very moment
that death takes place, that fixed or
tonic contraction s~upervenes; it is the
last act of life I have sometimes
seen it come and then vanish while
later on the genuine cadaverie rigidity
appeared.
Death occurs IN at least two radically.
different ways: First, it may come sud-
denly, either from emotion, from the
shock of q wound or a blow, from the
impression caused by submersion in
cold water, and still more in. almost
freezing water, or sometimes, Yin highly
nervous people, from the slightest injury,
especially in certain parts Of the body.
In this kind of death there may be no
trace of the vital manifestations after
the last breath, except q weak and soon
disappearing action of the heart. All
the powers of the brain suddenly col
lapse: consciousness, intelligence, will
powers the faculties of PERCEPTION, of
%sensorial and sensitive impressions, the
respiratory movements, all vanish at
once. There is no agony; nothing of
the ordinary struggle of death. The
body loses its temperature rapidly,7 but
cadaveric rigidity comes late and lasts
considerably.
Secondly, In the other kind of death,
which is the common, the ordinary kind,
there is, on the contrary, a real battle
in the system, especially when life ceases
from certain wounds or a great hemor-
rhage, or from a complete and sudden
deprivation of breathing. The heart in
those cases beats violently, the efforts
to breathe are extremely strong, con-
seriousness and the other powers of the
brain may remain for a short time, after
which a great agitation or general con-
WILSON'S appear. The temperature of
the body raises, and the rising may con-
tinue for a short time after the last effort
to breathe. Cadaveric rigidity appears
soon. but never Immediately.
My experiments, and the details of
the cases 1 have partly related, show
that the persistence of an attitude does
not take place in all the instances of the
first OF the two kinds of death I have
just characterized, but it is only in that
kind that that singular fact is observed.
In one of the conclusions of his excel
lent paper, DR.. Brinton had already
stated that in the cases of battlefield.
persistency of attitude that he has re-
ported, death most probably was in
Simultaneous, and unaccompanied by
%convulsions or agony. 1t results from
the facts 1 have studied in this article,
and from experiments that I have only
been able to allude to:
First, That the conservation of at
titudes of life and of facial expression,
after death, depends not upon the sud
den apparition of the so-called cadav-
eric or post-mortem igidity, but from
the s%upervention of a life-rigidity or
tonic contraction, similar to the fixed
spasm which we often see in hysterical
or paralytic individuals.
Secondly, That many causes of death,
acting without the production of the
ordinary struggles of agony, can pro-
duce the strange phenomena, character
lied by the persistence, after the cessa-
ton of life, of the attitudes and facial
expression which existed at the moment
of the last breath.-Profc. C. E. Brown-
SeQword, IN Youths Companion.
= Prof. J. W. S. Arnold, of New York, was
at my laboratory the day I discovered that
fact, and witnessed my first experiments.
The Triumph of Paste.