1. Age.—The bodies of young children, other things being equal, are said to putrefy rapidly. It should be remembered, however, that clothing possesses considerable power in retarding putrefaction, and that, in the hurry and anxiety to get rid of the infants, they are oftener exposed naked than clothed, which may, in some measure, account for their more rapid decomposition.
2. Sex.—Sex, it would appear, has little or no influence either to retard or hasten putrefaction; but it has been remarked that females dying during or soon after child-birth, irrespectively of the cause of death, putrefy rapidly.
3. Condition of the Body.
(a) Constitutional Peculiarity.—It is generally admitted that persons of the same age and sex, dying similar deaths, and subjected to like conditions as to exposure to the air and interment in the same soil, exhibit marked differences as regards the accession and rapidity of putrefaction. The explanation may be difficult, but the fact still remains.
(b) State of the Body.—Fat and flabby corpses putrefy more rapidly than the lean and emaciated. Hence old people, who are generally thin, keep fresh for a comparatively long time. Bodies, also, which are much mutilated rapidly decompose—decomposition setting in first at the parts injured. In examining wounds and bruises said to have been inflicted during life, it is well to remember that the tendency of putrefaction is to make them appear more severe.
4. Kind of Death.
(a) Effect of Disease.—Healthy persons dying suddenly, other things being equal, are said to decompose more slowly than those who have died from exhausting diseases, as in the case of typhoid, phthisis, and dropsy, following organic disease, or of those diseases attended with more or less putridity of the fluids.
(b) Effects of Poisons.—Putrefaction rapidly supervenes in those who have died suffocated by smoke, by carbonic oxide, and by sulphuretted hydrogen. Narcotic poisoning is stated to accelerate this condition; but in poisoning by phosphorus or alcohol, and in cases of death from sulphuric acid, the putrefactive changes are greatly retarded. Arsenic, chloride of zinc, and antimony are reputed to possess antiseptic properties. The manner in which death takes place from the action of the poison greatly hastens or retards putrefaction. Thus, in the case of poisoning by strychnine, it is found that when death has occurred rapidly, without much muscular exhaustion, putrefaction sets in slowly; but that, when the muscular irritability has been greatly exhausted by successive fits, the contrary is the result.