202 Journal New York Entomological Society [Vol. vi. 



This phase of the subject, the appearance and condition of the 

 human cadaver, after varying periods of interment and under varying 

 conditions, has received more or less scientific study for something 

 over a hundred years at least. Beginning with the report, published 

 in 1783, of the exhumations at Dunkerque, and continuing with 

 Thouret's report of those by Fourcroy in 1789 ; Marc's article in the 

 Dictionary of the Medical Sciences for 181 5 ; the studies of Orfila 

 and his associates, and the more recent studies of Bordas — throughout 

 all, the difficulties and complications of the subject are seen to be such 

 that, from the condition of the cadaver alone, no certain knowledge 

 of the exact date of death is to be had. 



Some of the conditions which influence and determine the process 

 and progress of the decomposition of buried human cadavers would 

 seem to be as follows : The age, sex, and perhaps even the race of the 

 subject ; the character and duration of the disease process to which 

 he succumbed ; the mode of death, whether quiet and peaceful or vio- 

 lent and painful ; the season of the year at which this event occurs ;. 

 the temperature and general conditions of the sick-room ; the length 

 of time intervening between death and burial ; the attention given 

 the corpse in the matter of cleaning, embalming and clothing ; the 

 kind of coffin in which it is placed, its internal fittings and external 

 casings ; the grave, its depth, the way it is prepared and filled, whether 

 one or more interments be made in the same grave-site ; the soil, its 

 character physical and chemic, soil-temperature and soil-moisture ; 

 the general, physical, climatic and meteorologic conditions of the 

 cemetery in which interment is made. 



These are but some of the many factors which must be taken into 

 consideration in the study of exhumed human cadavers. Just what 

 weight should be given to each we seem, at present, utterly unable to 

 determine. As in the study of the living, but diseased, subject, each 

 case would seem to be a law unto itself; and our previous knowledge 

 of apparently similar cases can afford suggestions only, not hard and 

 fast rules. To illustrate, Barrett quotes from Orfila an exhumation, at 

 Valenciennes, after fifteen years' interment, where "preservation was 

 so perfect the inspectors were enabled to determine that the individual 

 had not died a violent death, but of a peripneumony, complicated with 

 a gastro-enteritis. " In the following list will be found two cases 

 (Nos. 7 and 8), in which, after but three years and six months, the 

 skeletons were completely stripped and all soft tissues gone. Again, 



