The BRAIN and membranes are sometimes congested; occasionally apoplectic. Maschka[784] found congestion of brain and membranes 48 times and anæmia 30 times in 234 cases of asphyxia.
The ABDOMINAL ORGANS are generally darkly congested, although Maschka denies this for the liver and spleen in asphyxia.
The congestion of the viscera generally is doubtless due largely to the prior congestion of lungs and engorgement of heart.
Page[785] experimented on six kittens, strangling three of them by the hand, the other three by ligature. The results of the post-mortem examinations were nearly similar: the veins were full of dark fluid blood; the right cavities of the heart were similarly gorged, the left empty; lungs pale red, not congested and not distended. Brain normal. The differences were in the lungs; in the first series there were many small, irregular, circumscribed, dark-red ecchymoses scattered over the general surface; in the second, a small number of bright-red ecchymoses, somewhat larger than a large pin-head.
Langreuter[786] made some experiments on a cadaver from which enough of the posterior part had been removed to enable him to view the throat. He saw that the lateral digital pressure on the larynx closed the glottis; stronger pressure made the vocal cords override each other. Similar pressure between the larynx and hyoid bone caused apposition of the ary-epiglottic folds and occlusion of the air-passages. He experimented on sixteen bodies to ascertain the effect of blows and pressure on the larynx, with the following results: In eight cases, women, the thyroid cartilage was injured three times, the cricoid four; in eight, men, the thyroid eight and cricoid five. Whence he concluded that the larynx is better protected in women. In the sixteen cases the hyoid bone was fractured ten times.
The Proof of Death by Strangulation.
Tidy[787] says that “nothing short of distinct external marks would justify the medical jurist in pronouncing death to be the result of strangulation.” On the other hand, Taylor[788] considers the condition of the lungs described as characteristic. Liman[789] did not think there were any internal appearances which could distinguish suffocation, strangulation, and hanging from each other.
In estimating the value of testimony it will be well to consider the following facts:
A victim may be strangled without distinct marks being found. The practice of the thugs shows that this may be done with a soft cloth and carefully regulated pressure without making marks. Taylor,[790] while admitting the possibility, states that this admission “scarcely applies to those cases which require medico-legal investigation.”
The subject while intoxicated or in an epileptic or hysterical paroxysm may grasp his neck in gasping for air, and leave finger-marks.