50 . KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



or three degrees pending a space of four hours. There is, then, no connection 

 between cadaverous frigidity and rigidity. In cold weather a dog will remain 

 eight days stiff after death, while in summer it will hardly become rigid. Instance 

 can be adduced where, in typhus fever, cadaverous rigidity set in though the pulse 

 beat for three minutes later. Hares, when run down, are found with their legs rigid, 

 and life not departed. Butchers always allow stock that have been driven from 

 a distance to repose a few days before being slaughtered, as, if instantly killed, 

 rigidity would set in at once, but later — due to the chemical action taking place 

 in the muscles — that stiffness would disappear, and putrefaction prematurely ar- 

 rive. This is the reason why in La Plata, when troops of cattle are destined to 

 be killed for the European market, they are ever allowed several days of repose 

 before entering the abattoir. In the case of animals poisoned by strychnine, 

 their arterial blood is ever found to be black; rich in carbonic acid and poor in 

 oxygen. It is by provoking asphyxia that electricity destroys life ; a frog, how- 

 ever, can be charged with electricity for hours and be in no way affected, simply 

 because frogs cannot be suffocated. When a muscle works, it becomes acid ; 

 perhaps this acidity contributes to cadaverous stiffness, although Claude Bernard 

 has found the muscles of crayfish alkaline after death. Paralyzed muscles become 

 sooner rigid after death than the others, but neither age, sex, nor physique modi- 

 fies rigidity. On the whole, we know nothing certain of the causes which 

 determine rigidity. Winslow, 'tis true, doubted that any certain signs existed of 

 death; however, the presence or absence of rigidity, even when all other evidence 

 is wanting, will indicate when death is definite. No confusion must take place 

 between tetanic and cadaverous rigidity; in the former, when the stethoscope is 

 applied to the muscle, the ear recognises a certain rustling ; in the latter, absolute 

 silence. In the case of catalepsy, the muscle, when acted upon by electricity, 

 will contract; in the dead muscle no excitability will ensue. For juridical pur- 

 poses, if a body be completely rigid, death may be set down as having taken 

 place within two hours, and not extending beyond forty-eight, or in winter sixty. 

 A corpse may be supple — proof that rigidity has disappeared, and which may occur 

 in periods of great heat or deaths caused by lightning. The death of a muscle, 

 then, is characterized by rigidity, which, till then, retained its irritability or life ; 

 the disappearance of that rigidity is caused by the forming acids dissolving the 

 coagulated or stiffening matter of the muscles, thereby producing ammonia — the 

 characteristic of incipient putrefaction. Cadaverous stiffness, then, belongs to 

 the chemical order of phenomena. 



A new method of reproducing photographs in colors on china will, it is pre- 

 dicted, completely revolutionize that art. By the new process a dinner plate can 

 be converted into a veritable work of art at a shght expense — not one twentieth 

 of the cost by the plan of hand-painting. 



