INADEQUACY OF DIAPHANOUS TEST.
“The results of these experimental tests were satisfactory, as following and corroborating each other in eight out of the ten different lines of procedure; but the point of my paper is to show the utter inadequacy of the diaphanous test, upon which some are inclined entirely to rely. Sir Benjamin Richardson has reported an instance in which the test applied to the hand of a lady who had simply fainted gave no evidence of the red line; she therefore, on that test alone, might have been declared dead. In my case the reverse was presented; the body was dead, whilst the red line supposed to indicate life was perfectly visible. Hence the test might possibly lead to a double error, and ought never of itself to be relied upon.
“It is a question worthy of consideration whether the colouration observed was due to the fluid state of the blood after death; it is not unreasonable to suppose so but I prefer merely to offer the suggestion without further comment.”
Dr. Gannal, in his “Signes de la Mort,” p. 54, says:—
“The loss of transparency of the fingers is an uncertain sign, because with certain subjects it takes place some time before death; next, because it does not always occur in the corpse; and finally, because it exists under certain circumstances in sick persons—in intermittent fever, for example, when the skin loses colour, the hands get cold, and the nails blue, as happens at the onset of the fits.”
Orfila, “Médicine Légale,” vol. i., p. 478, 4th edit., observes:—
“This sign can be of no use, because it is easy to prove that the fingers of corpses placed between the eye and the flame of a candle are transparent, even when this experiment is made one or two days after death.”
Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson read a paper before the Medical Society of London on “The Absolute Signs and Proofs of Death,” published (in 1889) in No. 21 of the Asclepiad. The circumstance which originated his investigation was a case of the revival of an apparently dead child immediately before the funeral. Dr. Richardson has seen persons apparently dead, and presenting all the signs of death, but who were really living. Amongst these he cites the following:—
“A medical man found dead, as it was presumed, from an excessive dose of chloral. To all common observation this gentleman was dead. There was no sign of respiration; it was very difficult for an ear so long trained as my own to detect the sounds of the heart; there was no pulse at the wrist, and the temperature of the body had fallen to 97° Fahr. In this condition the man had lain for some hours before my arrival; and yet, under the simple acts of raising the warmth of the room to 84° Fahr. and injecting warm milk and water into the stomach, he rallied slowly out of the sleep, and made a perfect recovery.”