SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN ONE HUNDRED AND SIX YEARS OLD. 145 



Notes of Post-mortem Examination. 



September T2th, 1862, 4.0 p.m., thirty-two hours after death; 

 weather clear, not close : — 



The rigor mortis was tolerably well developed, the fingers being 

 bent in upon the palmar surface. There was no hair in either 

 axilla, there was darkish coloured hair in no great abundance upon 

 the mons martis, and gray hairs were thinly scattered over the 

 scalp generally. The beard seemed to me the day after the post- 

 mortem examination to have grown some little. Tongue was 

 generally dry and slightly furfuraceous ; some ecchymoses, like the 

 blotches of scorbutus, were to be seen upon the back of the right 

 hand. There was only one tooth in the jaws, the right upper 

 canine. The scalp separated easily, and the pericranium was like- 

 wise easily detached from the subjacent cranial bones in the form 

 of a dry, little vascular, coherent membrane. The cranial bones 

 had a smooth and somewhat glistening surface. Well-nigh con- 

 tinuous tracings on the skull marked the position of the coronal and 

 sagittal sutures. A broad and shallow depression, such as is often 

 seen in well-developed crania, not such as Virchow has given the 

 name of sattelkopfe to, crossed the skull in the line of the coronal 

 suture. There was no exposure of Breschet's sinuses. There was 

 an exostosis on the line of insertion of the temporal muscle upon 

 the frontal bone. The skull bones were easy to be sawn through, 

 the incisions being made, one parallel with and just in front of the 

 coronal suture, and the other carried horizontally through the 

 occipital protuberance, so as to meet the former just above, or in, 

 the great ala of the sphenoid. There was much difficulty in re- 

 moving the skull-cap, on account of the close adhesion of the dura 

 mater ; and in the process of removing them both, bone and mem- 

 brane together, a considerable quantity of yellowish fluid escaped. 

 The double cap thus removed brought away with it a portion of 

 the pia mater, exposing a deep fissure between two convolutions ; 

 the convolutions were rounded, not flattened. Some little force 

 was necessary to separate the dura mater from the cranial vault, 

 which, however, was smooth internally, and presented only two or 

 three small Pacchionian pits along its middle line. The canals for 

 the middle meningeal arteries had had deep banks deposited on 

 either side of them, and in places they were all but arched over, 



L 



