205 



The law I wish to establish is borne out by a great many facts, 

 observed in the lower animals and in man, showing that every cause 

 of increase in the degree of muscular irritability a short time before 

 death, may be considered as a cause of delay of the setting in of 

 cadaveric rigidity and of the persistence of that post-mortem state of 

 muscles, and also a cause of delay of the time at which putrefaction 

 manifests itself in muscles, and an evident slowness of the process of 

 putrefaction ; while, on the contrary, every cause of decrease in the 

 degree of muscular irritability some time before death, produces the 

 opposite effect on cadaveric rigidity and putrefaction. 



I will examine successively the relations existing between 

 muscular irritability, post-mortem rigidity and putrefaction in the 

 various following cases : 1st, in paralysed muscles ; 2nd, in muscles 

 the temperature of which is diminished before death ; 3rd, in 

 animals or men killed by lightning or by galvanism ; 4th, in over- 

 driven cattle, in cocks after a fight, in men after over- exertion, and in 

 animals hunted to death ; 5th, in men dying in a good state of health 

 or after prolonged disease ; 6th, in men who have died of cholera, 

 of tetanus, or after other convulsive diseases ; 7th, in men and 

 animals killed by poison. 



1st. Irritability, cadaveric rigidity and putrefaction in paralysed 

 muscles. I have shown long agot that during a certain period after 

 the beginning of a paralysis, the paralysed muscles are endowed with 

 more irritability than healthy muscles. I have ascertained this 

 fact in various ways ; but the most decisive method consists in com- 

 paring the duration of irritability in a paralysed muscle and in the 

 corresponding healthy one of the opposite side, while they are both 

 submitted to the same excitation. I have often found in experi- 

 menting in that way, that the paralysed muscle remained irritable 

 twice, three times, or even four times as long as the healthy one. 



The following experiments, taken out of many of the same kind, 

 while they show that muscular irritability is increased in consequence 



having the same bearing. (See Comptes Rendus de la Soc. de Biologic, vol. i. 

 1849, pp. 39, 138, 154 and 173, and vol. ii. 1850, p. 194 ; also Comptes Rendus 

 de 1'Acad. des Sciences, vol. xlv. 5th Oct. 1857.) 



f Experimental Researches applied to Physiology and Pathology. New York, 

 1853, pp. 68-73. 



VOL. XI. Q 



