=The Cerebral Cavity.=—Gases may be generated in the cerebral cavity soon after death, especially in drowned cases, where the gas forming bacteria, the aerogenes capsulati, are distributed all over the body. These bacteria work much more rapidly in fresh or shallow water, or in the summer when the water is warm, than in the winter when the water is cold, or the body is in salt water. The gases may penetrate every tissue in the body, particularly the tissues about the eyes, which gives the eyes their bulged appearance. The gases that are formed in the brain and forced out into the tissues surrounding the eye do not enter the eye ball. In these cases the eye ball may or may not be pushed out of its socket, depending, of course, upon the amount of gases that have been produced.
These gases may be removed by inserting a trocar inside the head at the inner angle of the eye or in the nose through the turbinated process of the ethmoid bone.
After the gases have been removed from the inside of the skull, about one-half pint of strong formaldehyde fluid should be injected.
Another method of inserting the trocar into the brain would be to pass it through the foramen magnum. This can be done by inserting the trocar in the neck a little below and behind the lobe of the ear, directing the needle upward and inward toward the opposite eyebrow, when the needle will enter the subarachnoid space (Barnes Method).
In cases of hydrocephalus (water on the brain) where there may be from one to two quarts of water inside the cranium, the water may be removed by any of the above processes.
For ordinary cases we do not feel that it is necessary to make a cavity injection in the head for the reason that the circulation there is complete, only in rare instances do we find an obstruction.
=Purging.=—By purging, as the embalmer uses the term, is meant, the fluid which emerges from the mouth and nose of the cadaver. If this fluid is a brownish coffee-like substance, it signifies it is coming from the stomach, but if it is a bloody frothy mixture it signifies it is coming from the lungs.
The real cause of purging is the living and growing saprophytic bacteria, which were normally in the body, or having gained access later, produce as a result of their development, gas formations. These gases confined as they are, press out from the stomach and lungs the contained fluids of the color mentioned above.