A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers.

  • Chevers, Norman, 1818-1886.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    656/902 (page 620)
    Punctiform Ecehymosis in the interior of the body as a proof of Death by Suffocation. In a memoir on this subject,* Dr. Ogston shows that the spots or effusions in question, with a few and partial exceptions, are found to vary in size from a pin-point to a large pin-head, and in number from three or four to thirty or forty in the respective localities. In fifty- two of the cases, the blood-spots occurred on the surface of the lungs; in thirty-one, on the heart ; in twenty-two, on the inner face of the scalp; in eighteen, on the pericranium ; in fourteen, on the thymus gland ; in nine, on the interior of the pericardium ; in eight, on the root of the aorta; in five, on the liver; in two, on the skin ; and in four, singly, on the spleen, diaphragm, pulmonary artery, and pleura costalis. In only two instances were these ecchymoses seen in upwards of two hundred drowned bodies, and in only one of between forty and fifty hanged persons. Dr. Ogston has never met with them after death by strangula- tion. On the other hand, he has sought in vain for these blood-spots in nine cases of undoubted death by suffocation—all adults. Without deny- ing the occasional, though rare, occurrence of punctiform ecchymoses after deaths from other causes, or insisting on their necessary presence in every instance of death by suffocation, he concludes that their dis- covery in considerable numbers, in well-defined shapes, and limited in size, on the heart, lungs, and thymus gland, especially in infauts, either with or without other corroborative tests, and in the absence of other obvious morbid conditions, will afford the strongest presumptive evidence, if not absolute proof, of suffocation. Twenty-nine years ago I observed that, in certain cases of death, attended with suffocative action, ecchymoses are found upon the plane of the descending thoracic aorta, as it becomes visible through the transparent pleura upon raising the left lung.f I said that this lesion consists in the presence of numerous raised spots of red or purple ecchymoses, varying from one to four lines in diameter, occupying the cells [areolar tissue] immediately in contact with the denser portion of the external coat, and remaining attached to it after the loose filamentary tissue of its sheath has been torn away. These may be presumed to have been effused by some of the numerous vessels which can always be traced to their cir- cumference ; and generally appear to have been so recently deposited, as to lead to the surmise that they are formed either shortly before death, or during the struggle of the last agony. This form of lesion, together with the state of oedema already noticed, is usually found in conjunction with a turgid state of all the capillary vessels supplying the arterial parietes ; aud it is observed in cases where death has been attended with * Brit. Med. Jour., Sept. 26, 18G8, p. 332. t On Acute Aortitis, Guy's Hospital Reports, Vol. VI., 1811, p. 307.