appears to be very generally the case. For example, the blood was fluid in the case of the soldier who died in convulsions, in Dr. Home's patient, in four adults I have examined, in Dr. Traill's case of death from morphia, and likewise in Pyl's case. But at the same time this condition of the blood is not invariable: In the case related in Knape and Hecker's Register, it was coagulated in the left cavities of the heart; in another related by Petit in Corvisart's Journal, there were clots in both ventricles;[1] and in the case of the first infant mentioned in page 549, clots were also found in both ventricles. In Alibert's case a large fibrinous concretion was found in the heart, clearly showing that the blood had coagulated after death as usual.
It appears that the body is often apt to pass rapidly into putrefaction. In one of the cases I examined, although the body had been kept only thirty hours in a cool place in the month of December, the cuticle was easily peeled off, the joints were flaccid, and an acid smell was exhaled. In Réaumur's case, that of a young man who died in fifteen hours, in consequence of his companions in a drunken frolic having mixed a drachm of opium in his wine, the body soon became covered with large blue stains, and gave out an insupportable odour. A French physician has related in the Journal de Médecine a still more pointed case of a lady who died seven hours after taking a large quantity of laudanum by mistake, and whose body was so far gone in putrefaction fourteen hours after death, that the dissection could not be delayed any longer. The hair and cuticle separated on the slightest friction, and the stomach, intestines, and large vessels were distended with air.[2]
It is doubtful whether this is a constant appearance or not. In one case I examined, the body was free from putrefaction forty-eight hours after death.
Although opium is generally believed to suspend all the secretions and excretions but the sweat, instances have been met with where a great collection of urine was found in the bladder after death. In a paper on the signs of death by opium, in Augustin's Repertorium, it is stated that Welper of Berlin always found the bladder full of urine, and the kidneys gorged with blood, both in man and animals.[3] I am not prepared to say how far this is a common condition, as the state of the urinary organs is seldom noticed in published cases.
In the examination of the dead body unequivocal evidence will sometimes be procured by the discovery of a portion of the poison in the stomach. But it must not always be concluded that opium has not been swallowed, because the sense of smell, chemical analysis, and experiments on animals fail to detect it. For, as previously remarked, the opium may not remain in the stomach after death, though a large quantity was swallowed, and not vomited. This may arise from two causes. It may be all absorbed, as will often happen when it has been taken in the liquid form: or it may be partly absorbed and partly
