Originally posted by Geddy2112
View Post
Jason Payne James along with Richard Jones, Steve Karch and John Manlove updated Simpson's Forensic Medicine, 13th edition (2011) which is a standard textbook. Writing about Rigor Mortis, something often referred to when discussing Chapman’s ToD:
"The only use of assessing the presence or absence of rigor lies in the estimation of the time of death, and the key word here is estimation, as rigor is such a variable process that it can never provide an accurate assessment of the time of death. Extreme caution should be exercised in trying to assign a time of death based on the very subjective assessment of the degree and extent of rigor."
They also wrote about body-cooling:
'...a body is not a uniform structure: its temperature will not fall evenly and, because each body will lie in its own unique environment, each body will cool at a different speed, depending on the many factors surrounding it.'
Comment