ANIMAL HEAT. 497 



temperatures, as in the case of a rabbit shaved, whose temperature may remain 

 2° or 3° below the normal for a week or more. When the cause of the ab- 

 normal condition disappears, the centres are readjusted to the normal standard. 



E. Post-mortem Rise of Temperature. 



A rise of temperature after death is not uncommon; indeed, in ease of 

 violent death of healthy individuals, and after death following convulsions, 

 a rise in temperature is almost invariable. This increase is due to continued 

 heat-production and to diminished heat-dissipation. Heat-production after 

 death may be due to continued chemical activity in the muscles and other 

 structures which are not dead but simply in a moribund state. There is, as it 

 were, a residual metabolic activity which remains in the cells until their tem- 

 perature has been reduced to such a standard that the molecular transforma- 

 tions cease — in other words, until the death of the cells occurs. Consequently, 

 the higher the temperature of the individual at the time of somatic death (the 

 cessation of the circulation and respiration), the longer heat-production con- 

 tinues, because the longer the time required to cool the cells to such a degree 

 that their chemical processes no longer go on. Heat is also produced during 

 the development of rigor mortis. The more quickly rigor sets in, and the 

 more intense it is, the greater is the abundance of heat produced. 



The tendency to an increase of bodily temperature is favored by the marked 

 diminution of heat-dissipation which occurs immediately upon the cessation 

 of the circulation and respiration. Therefore, while both heat-production and 

 heat-dissipation fall at once and enormously at the time of death, heat-dissipa- 

 tion may be decreased to a more marked degiee than heat-production, so that 

 heat may accumulate and the bodily temperature rise. 



Temperature Sense. — (See Cutaneous Sensibility, in the section on Special 

 Senses.) 



Vol. l.—Vi 



