Postmortem Interval

Abstract

The authors have investigated 15 kinds of findings of 30 bodies burned at known times and autopsied in our laboratory. The conclusions are as follows: As the criteria for determining the time of death, external findings of cadavers burned lose value considerably, but internal findings, especially undigested food in the stomach remain as valuable as in ordinary circumstances. The usual criteria can be applied with the same degree of success to burned bodies, because appearances of findings caused by cadaveric phenomena show neither acceleration nor retardation in bodies burned so far as they are not severely destroyed.