WAS DEATH CAUSED BY STARVATION OR DISEASE?
Was the original disease aggravated by a failure to supply the patient with food, or are the lesions observed the result of starvation? A positive conclusion can be reached in such cases by carefully considering the results of a post-mortem examination together with other facts elicited by the inquiry.
Harriet Staunton,[966] a young girl, had been kept in close confinement by four interested persons, and removed in great haste, when in a condition of extreme prostration, to Penge, where she died, on the day succeeding her removal, in a state of extreme exhaustion and emaciation. Fat was absent from every part of the body; the stomach and intestines were empty, contracted, and their walls were greatly thinned.
A small deposit of tubercle was found at the summit of the left lung and a recent deposit of miliary tubercle beneath the arachnoid, upon the surface of one of the cerebral hemispheres. No other tuberculous deposits were found. The opinion given by the physicians making the post-mortem examination was that death resulted from starvation. This opinion was shared by Professor Virchow, of Berlin, who stated that the tuberculous deposits found could not explain the cause of death.
In this case the extreme emaciation, entire absence of fat, thinning of the intestinal walls, etc., were the determining conditions. While extreme emaciation alone is not sufficient to decide the case to be one of starvation, its existence, taken in connection with some of the conditions found constantly in persons known to have died of starvation, is a strongly corroborative fact. Nor can its absence be taken as conclusive evidence that death occurred from other cause than starvation, since in some cases of death from inanition emaciation has not been extreme and in a few cases not at all marked.[967] Instances of this character are reported by Taylor and others.