He afterwards got Dr. Klanck, his acquaintance, to make some express experiments on animals; and the results were strikingly conformable. In dogs poisoned with arsenic and left for two months sometimes buried in a damp cellar, sometimes exposed to the air of the cellar, the flesh and alimentary canal were red and fresh, as if pickled; and though the place where the carcases were subsequently buried again was flooded for eight months after, the intestines were eventually found entire and red, the fat converted into adipocire, and most of the muscles unaltered,—those only being soft and greasy which were directly acted on by the water. From a set of comparative experiments which were made on dogs killed by blows, or poisoned by corrosive sublimate, or by opium, Klanck found, that, after being buried in the same place, and for the same space of time the whole soft parts of the carcases were converted into a greasy mass. In a subsequent year he repeated his experiments, the bodies, however, being this time left exposed to the air of the cellar. The experiments were commenced in the month of August. In ten days there appeared slight signs of incipient putrefaction; a faint putrid smell was exhaled, and all flies that settled on the carcase died. This state continued for eight or ten weeks without increasing. After that the soft parts began to grow firmer and drier, and at the same time the putrid odour was succeeded by a smell like that of garlic, which became insupportably strong when the carcases were removed into warm air. The bodies, three years afterwards, still continued dry and undecayed.[[790]]
A similar set of facts was again brought before the public between 1809 and 1811, during the criminal proceedings in a case like that of the widow Ursinus, tried first at Bayreuth and afterwards by appeal at Munich. A lady near Bayreuth died of five days’ illness, under symptoms of violent general irritation of the alimentary canal. Some months afterwards a variety of circumstances having raised a suspicion that she had been poisoned by her maid, Margaretha Zwanziger, a judicial investigation was set on foot; the consequence of which was, that the same woman came under suspicion of having also previously poisoned another lady and a gentleman with whom she had been successively in service. The bodies of the three people were accordingly disinterred, one of them five months, another six months, and the third fourteen months after death. In all of them the external parts were not properly speaking putrid, but hard, cheesy, or adipocirous; in the last two the stomach and intestines were so entire as to allow of their being tied, taken out, cut up, and handled; and in one a sloughy spot was found in the region of the pylorus. Arsenic was detected in two of the bodies by Rose’s process of analysis.[[791]]
The next example to the same effect which will be mentioned is perhaps the most satisfactory of all, because it was the result of an express experiment on the human subject. Dr. Kelch of Königsberg buried the internal organs of a man who had died of arsenic, and whose body had remained without burial till the external parts had begun to decay; and on examining the stomach and intestines five months after, he found that the hamper in which they were contained was very rotten; but that “they had a peculiar smell, quite different from that of putrid bowels, were not yet acted on by putrefaction, but as fresh as when first taken from the body, and might have served to make preparations. They had lost nothing of their colour, glimmer, or firmness. The inflamed spots on the stomach had not disappeared, and the small intestines also showed in some places the inflammatory redness unaltered.”[[792]]
In a recent French case, although the degree of preservation was less remarkable, the other circumstances are so striking as to render it well worthy of notice. In this instance the body was disinterred after having been seven years in the ground, in a high situation and sandy soil. The coffin, which was of oak, had become dry and brittle, and no moisture appeared on the inside. The body was entire: the head, trunk, and limbs retained their situation; but the organs of the chest and belly were converted into a brown soft mass of the consistence of plaster, which lay on each side of the spine. In this mass MM. Ozanam and Idt, the medical inspectors, succeeded in discovering by chemical analysis a considerable quantity of arsenic.[[793]]
M. Ollivier describes another French case, where the body had been buried for three years, and was found so completely dried up that the trunk weighed only two pounds. The integuments were entire, dark-brown, and of a faint odour like decayed wood. The organs of the chest and belly were confounded together in a foliaceous membranous mass, in which the liver only could be distinguished, but in an exceedingly shrivelled state. Arsenic was detected in the membranous matter by MM. Barruel and Henri. The preservative power of the arsenic was promoted in this case by the sandy nature of the soil.[[794]]
In the case of the girl Warden, which has been several times alluded to, the internal organs were also preserved somewhat in the same manner as in the German cases. The body had been buried three weeks; yet the mucous coat of the stomach and intestines, except on its mere surface, was very firm, and all the morbid appearances were consequently quite distinct. Nay, three weeks after disinterment, except that the vascularity had disappeared, the membranes and the appearances in them remained in the same state.[[795]] A similar case has been recorded by Metzger. It is that of an old man who died of six hours’ illness, and in whose stomach three drachms of arsenic were found. The body had been kept ten days in February before burial, and was disinterred eight days after that; yet there was not the slightest sign of putrefaction any where.[[796]] A parallel case was described by myself in the Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Transactions;[[797]] and I have met with three others of the same kind since.
In a very important case, that of Mrs. Smith, which was made the subject of investigation at Bristol in December, 1834, the body was also found in a state of great preservation, modified, however, by adipocirous decomposition, owing to the presence of water in the coffin. The body had been fourteen months interred. The internal parts, especially of the head and neck, were here and there decayed somewhat or converted into adipocire, the muscles and internal organs entire, though more or less shrivelled, the alimentary tube remarkably preserved, “every part being almost as distinct as if the inspection had been made at a very short period after death,” “the mucous membrane sufficiently tenacious to be lifted by the forceps in as large flakes as usual;” and the reporters, Drs. Riley and Symonds, Messrs. Herapath and Kelson, seem to have had no difficulty in ascertaining the absence of vascularity, extravasation, or even abrasion of the inner membrane. Artificial orpiment, the preparation proved to have been given [see p. [225]], was found in the stomach by Mr. Herapath, and the quantity appeared to be about half a drachm.[[798]]
A similar instance, very remarkable in all its circumstances, was investigated here in 1834 by my colleague Dr. Traill to whom I am indebted for the particulars. The master of a foreign vessel died in about twenty-four hours, apparently of malignant cholera, at a small port in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh: and the body was forthwith buried. A suspicion, however, having arisen in his native country that he had been poisoned by his mate, an inquiry was instituted at the request of the foreign government; and the body was disinterred five months after death. The face and neck was swollen, black, and decayed; but the rest of the body was quite free of the usual signs of putrefaction. The skin was white and firm, the muscles fresh, the lungs crepitating, the liver and spleen much shrivelled, the stomach and intestines entire throughout their whole tissues, and capable of being handled freely without injury. On the mucous coat of the stomach several dark patches of extravasation were found, likewise several spots and large patches which presented on their surface a firmly adhering bright yellow crust; and the contents of the stomach consisted of a considerable quantity of yellow sandy matter of the consistence of paste. The contents and adhering crusts were found to consist chiefly of oxide of arsenic partially converted into sulphuret. In this instance, as in that last described, the coffin contained water, owing to its having laid in a sandy soil resting on clay.
An important case of the same nature was communicated to me in 1843 by Mr. Sandell of Potton, Bedfordshire, and afterwards published by Mr. Hedly of Bedford. A man Dazley at Wrestlingford, affected with symptoms of gastro-enteric irritation for five or six days, was seized with sickness, vomiting, heat and constriction in the throat, and great weakness, about an hour after getting a white powder from his wife; and in eight hours he expired, without any suspicion of unfair usage arising at the time. Suspicions, however, being entertained afterwards, the body which had not been examined at first, was disinterred in five months, during the month of March. The countenance was so entire as to be recognisable. Adipocire had been formed in many places. The stomach and intestines were “in a most perfect state of preservation,” as if death had taken place only a few days previously. The stomach presented yellow patches on its outer and inner surface,—was generally red over its villous coat, which had also been abraded near the cardiac end,—and, together with the small intestines, was lined with white powder and contained more of it enveloped in much red mucus. This powder proved to be arsenic. About the middle of the small intestines a small ulcerated opening was found, through which some arsenic had escaped.[[799]]
The following cases which have come under my own notice during the last five years are also worthy of observation. In a case submitted to me on the part of the crown in 1841, which has been adverted to above for another purpose [p. [265]], the body after being three months interred was found with the head and face decayed and putrid; but the muscular substance was little changed; and the inspectors were particularly struck with the state of preservation of the body, and also with the very distinct state of inflammation seen over almost the whole external and internal surfaces of the alimentary canal,—a description, the accuracy of which I had afterwards an opportunity of verifying. In the case of Mr. Gilmour (p. [265]), whose body had been buried 101 days, the external parts were more decayed; but the alimentary canal appeared equally entire both to the original inspectors, Drs. M’Kinlay and Wylie, and likewise to myself three weeks later. But the following instance, in which I was consulted in 1839, is the most remarkable one of the kind that has hitherto occurred to me; because the observations then made were the result of an express experiment in a medico-legal investigation. The history of this case, which arose from small doses of arsenic frequently administered, has been already given above in some detail [p. [250]]. Arsenic not having been detected in the contents or tissues of the stomach, and the trial of the individual suspected of giving the poison being necessarily postponed for some months, I recommended that a third examination of the body,—for it had been twice disinterred for inspection within ten days after death,—should be made at as distant an interval as possible, in order to ascertain whether it underwent preservation from decay. It was accordingly disinterred again, five months after death. It had an ammoniacal, but not a putrid odour. The skin was here and there covered with a thin sebaceous matter, at one or two places stripped of the epidermis, but for the most part natural in appearance, firm, and elastic. The nails were loose. The muscles of the head and near the tops of the scapulæ were adipocirous, on the chest and abdomen obscurely fibrous in texture and hardened, but elsewhere unaltered, and “in the lower extremities so perfect that they might have been used for an anatomical demonstration.” The liver and lungs were also in a state of good preservation, and the latter crepitated when cut. The other viscera had been removed at the previous examinations.