RIGIDITY AFTER DEATH. (JCH 



Beclard, and Treviranus the contractility of the 

 muscles continues only so long as their tempera- 

 ture remains above that of the surrounding me- 

 dium, and wholly ceases whenever the body 

 becomes cold, for if the limbs be then flexed, 

 they do not again become rigid. Miiller relates 

 on the authority of Nysten and Sommer, that 

 rigidity begins in fifteen or twenty minutes after 

 death from lingering maladies, in which the 

 powers of life have been greatly exhausted that 

 it commences sooner in infants and very old 

 people than in robust constitutions, or in such 

 as have been carried off by violence in the full 

 vigour of health, without loss of blood, in which 

 it does not come on for several hours after the 

 circulation has ceased, and remains for a propor- 

 tionably longer time. It has been also said, that 

 after death from exposure to intense cold, (in 

 which the rigidity commences before death,) it is 

 completed very soon afterwards and that in a 

 case of tetanus, the spasmodic contractions 

 passed immediately into the rigidity of death. 

 But that it consists of the last remainder of 

 vitality, is evident from the fact, that it always 

 disappears before putrefaction begins, and its 

 duration is shortened by whatever diminishes the 

 previous forces of life. 



In accordance with the opinion of many modern 

 physiologists, Cuvier represents the process of 

 nutrition, by which blood is converted into the 



