“O gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry’s wounds Open their congeal’d mouths, and bleed afresh! Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity; For ’tis thy presence that exhales this blood From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells; Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural, Provokes this deluge most unnatural.”—
_Situation and attitude of the body._—It cannot be too generally known that, upon the discovery of a dead body, its situation and attitude should never be disturbed until it has been examined by competent persons. The information which the medical inquirer may obtain from his observations upon the position of the dead body, is often important and decisive; it may even, in some cases, furnish data for determining whether the death was occasioned by accident, suicide, or murder. We may, for example, find the deceased in a posture which he could never have himself assumed, whence we should be led to conclude that he had not fallen by his own hands. In the case of the disputed suicide of the _Earl of Essex_[8] in the tower, much information was lost by the body having been stripped and removed before a due examination took place; the hasty manner in which this was performed, excited on that, as it necessarily must on all similar occasions, very considerable suspicion respecting the motives which could prompt so premature and unnecessary an interference. An attention to the posture of the body is also important in cases of wounds, which should always be examined with reference to this circumstance. It has also been very justly observed, that a person in a fit, or in a state of intoxication, might fall accidentally into such a posture, as to be actually suffocated by the pressure of his own hand, or that of any resisting body upon his throat. If such a case were to occur, all evidence of the fact would be destroyed by any officious interference that might change the exact posture in which the body was found.
_General appearance of the countenance, as to colour, vascular turgescence, or congestion, and morbid physiognomy._—The observation of the countenance of a deceased person will very frequently furnish the medical inquirer with a useful hint in the investigation; we have, for instance, already spoken of the expressive physiognomy of a strangled person, (_page_ 45) and in the course of our work, the reader will find ample illustrations of the general importance of the subject.