heart was still beating twenty times in a minute, i. e. while the man 

 was still alive, if life is considered to persist so long as the heart beats. 

 These beatings ceased only three minutes and a half after cadaveric 

 rigidity had shown itself everywhere. A quarter of an hour after- 

 wards there was no more trace of cadaveric rigidity, and in less than 

 an hour after death signs of putrefaction had appeared in the limbs. 

 This man died of exhaustion after a prolonged typhoid fever. 



It seems quite evident from the above fact, and others of the same 

 kind which I have not mentioned, that the greatest differences exist 

 as regards cadaveric rigidity and putrefaction in consequence of the 

 degree of muscular irritability at the time of death. 



6th. Influence of convulsions on cadaveric rigidity and putrefac- 

 tion. The law which it is my object to establish is borne out every 

 day in cases in which death follows violent and prolonged convulsions. 

 Sommer and other writers have seen cadaveric rigidity appearing so 

 quickly after death by tetanus, that the spasmodic rigidity caused by 

 the disease during life was followed by the post-mortem rigidity with- 

 out any interval of muscular relaxation between these two states. In 

 a strongly built woman, who died of hydrophobia after violent con- 

 vulsions, I found that cadaveric rigidity had set in within the first 

 hour after death, and that it ceased before the end of the tenth hour. 

 In 1849 I made many observations at the Gros-Caillou Hospital in 

 Paris, on corpses of soldiers who died from cholera, the general 

 results of which are, 1st, that cadaveric rigidity appeared late and 

 lasted long in those patients who died quickly, i. e. before a prolonged 

 alteration of nutrition ; 2nd, that those muscles which had been at- 

 tacked with violent and frequent cramps, became rigid very soon after 

 death, and remained so only a short time*. 



I have often had the opportunity of seeing rabbits dying from con- 

 vulsions in cases in which the supra-renal capsules were the only 

 organs found diseased, and have often observed in them that the 

 more violent and frequent the convulsions, the earlier did cadaveric 

 rigidity appear, the sooner it ceased, and the quicker also putrefac- 

 tion occurred and proceeded. 



7th. Influence of certain poisons on cadaveric rigidity and putre- 



* In one case cadaveric rigidity appeared in the calf of the right leg just after 

 death, and ceased in less than two hours ; while the other muscles, which had had 

 no cramps, hcgan to he rigid only live hours after death. 



