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 1815 ; 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. Tust 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, 
