A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

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• This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 Excerpt: ...minutes after death; and in amputated limbs he has produced them in from half a minute to four minutes and a half after amputation. The only favourable opportunity which occurred to him for producing, after death, a serous blister, was in the person of a female thirty years of age, who died suffocated from acute congestion of the lungs. She was slightly dropsical. Three hows and a half after death, when the body was quite warm, ajid the joints were flexible, a spirit-lamp flame was applied to the lower and back part of the left leg.
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  After the lapse of an hour, blisters had been formed, and were filled with serum of a pale straw-colour: one contained two and the other three drachms. Ten and fifteen hours after death, when the body had become cold and rigid, the flame produced only gaseous blisters. ('Pathological Researches on Vital and Post-mortem Burning,' 1850.) The results obtained by Dr. Liman in repeating these experiments on five dead bodies, in from one to two hours after death, are not in accordance with those described by Dr. Wright. Liman noticed that by a spirit-flame a blister might be raised, but that it contained nothing more than vapour derived from the fluids of the skin beneath the cuticle. It soon became flat and charred, and there were no changes in the surrounding skin indicative of vital reaction. The temperature (of the bodies) varied from 78 to 98. No experiments were performed on the bodies of persons dying or just dead. (Casper's ' Vierteljahrschrift,' 1863, vol. 24, p. 3G7.) It is, therefore, exceedingly doubtful whether, except under special conditions of the body such as general dropsy, blisters containing serum can be produced by a burn on the skin of a person really dead. Dr. Christison found that when boiling water was poured ...
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