Aug. 8, 1884.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



115 



ATTITUDES AFTER DEATH. 



By C. E. Bkown-S^quard.* 



VMONG the phenomena sometimes noticed at the hour 

 of death there is one that offers a peculiar interest, 

 and which, up to recent times, has remained a mystery. 

 This phenomenon appears especially, but not exclusively, 

 after a sudden death due either to wounds received upon 

 the field of battle or elsewhere, or to other causes, but 

 almost always when there has been an intense excitement, 

 and often also when great bodily fatigue has preceded the 

 last moment of life. The principal feature ot this curiotis 

 fact is the persistence after death of the expression of the 

 face or of certain attitudes of the limbs or body, or of both. 



The object of this article is to answer this question, and 

 to show that the cause or agency to be discovered is not 

 the suddeu appearance of that state of muscular ttiffness 

 known by the name of rigor mords or cadaveric rigidi/i/, 

 but that such agency is found in a peculiar action of the 

 nervous centres that manifests itself a little before or at the 

 instant of death. One of the most striking examples of the 

 strange fact that I am about to study was observed by Dr. 

 Rossbach, of Wurzburg, upon the battlefield o Beaumont,, 

 near Sedan, in 1870. He found the corpse of a soldier 

 half-sitting, half reclining, upon the ground, and delicately 

 holding a tin cup between his thumb and forefinger, and 

 directing it toward a mouth that was wanting. The poor 

 man had, while in this position, been killed by a cannon- 

 ball that took off his head and all of his face except the 



Such persistence exhibits itself clearly in certain cases ; for 

 example, wlien, despite the sudden cessation of life, a limb 

 that is raised does not drop, or when the body of a man 

 standing, or seated on horseback, does not fall over. 



In order to clearly understand the terms of the problem 

 to be solved in reference to this [jhenomenon, it is abso- 

 lutely necessary to know (1) that our attitudes and facial 

 expression depend upon a contraction of our muscles due 

 to an influence of the nervous centres, and (2) that such 

 influence necessarily cea-ing at the instant of death, a re- 

 laxation must also necessarily occur in all the muscles that 

 were contracted, unless some other agency at once replaces 

 that which has disappeared and causes the same physical 

 state to persist that formerly existed therein. 



The question, then, is this : What is the agency that, as 

 soon as the faculty of volition vanishes, takes the place of 

 the latter, or at least produces in the muscles an organic 

 state that prevents all relaxation 1 



* La Nature, 



lower jaw. The body and arms at the instant of death hac? 

 suddenly taken on a rigidity that caused them to after- 

 ward remain in the position that they were in when the 

 head was remove<I. Twenty-four hours had elapsed since 

 the battle, when Dr. Rossbach found the body in this state. 

 (See engraving.) 



In the first work of any importance in which this subject 

 has been treated of. Dr. Chenu relates that a French 

 military surgeon. Dr. Perrier, was greatly surprised upon 

 going over the battle-field of Alma, the day succeeding the 

 terrible conflict, to see that many corpses of Russian 

 soldiers had attitudes and expressions of countenance like 

 those of living persons. Some of these corpses had the 

 different expressions that characterize anguish, suffering, 

 or despair. Others, on the contrary, had the appearance of 

 greater calmness and resignation. 



One case particularly attracted the doctor's attentioa, 

 where the body lay stretched out upon the ground, the 

 knees bent, the hands clasped and lifted in the air, and the 



