Chapman’s death.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Fisherman's entire thesis seems to run as follows:



1. Within an hour of death, the rectal (core) temperature of a human corpse can only drop by about one degree from the normal (warm) 37 degrees centigrade due to the laws of physics.

2. If the rectal core temperature is warm then the body must feel warm at the surface when examined by a medic.

3. As Chapman's body did not feel warm but cold at the surface when examined by Dr Phillips. she cannot only have been dead an hour.



The flaw in this thesis should be obvious but, in case not, here is an excerpt from Bernard Knight's paper entitled 'The Evolution of Methods for Estimating the Time of Death from Body Temperature" published in Forensic Science International vol 36, 1988, which destroys points 2 and 3. Knight is commenting here on an 1880 paper by J. Wilkie Burman (who took surface measurements of a small number of dead bodies with a thermometer at regular intervals):




'His graphs showed no plateaux and, in fact, he notes that the body cools more rapidly soon after death, especially when the initial body temperature is high. This is presumably because surface measurements do not reflect the initial retention of heat in the core, as detected by rectal readings.'

https://ibb.co/j6Yxj7f

[Herlock Sholmes]

Fisherman keeps talking about a "freak" result because the cooling and rigor is being said to have appeared earlier than one would expect from a "normal" case.



But Chapman, by being in an advanced state of a wasting disease and by being severely undernourished was already outside of the norm. Not to mention that she was murdered on the street. We don't have any scientific studies, as far as I am aware, which look at the rate of cooling and onset of rigor of people with wasting diseases and malnourishment who died in the open but what if it was found that in, say, 75 per cent of such cases the body is cold within an hour and rigor is present at the same time? In which event, the results in Chapman's case would be entirely as expected and within the norm.



That's why it is ridiculous and totally unscientific of Fisherman to use the word "freak" for a result outside of the "average". But we all know why he is doing it.



Fisherman - If you disagree, please provide examples of forensic pathologists using the word "freak" to describe a result outside of the average in respect of cooling or rigor. Because what I see are experts who all repeatedly tell us that there are so many variables for cooling and rigor that there is no reliable "average" which can be applied to all cases.



Your argument is like saying that, because the average height of a man today is five feet nine inches, if I tell you that you the first man I saw in the street after I Ieft my house this morning was five feet six inches you will conclude that this was a "freak" result and, indeed, unlikely to be true. That's the kind of nonsensical outcome that one gets when playing silly games around the word "average".

[Fisherman]

How do you make all of these factors work, John? How on earth could Phillips, after having stuck his hands INSIDE Chapmans body, NOT be correct in saying that she was cold? And how can a woman described as cold have been dead for an hour only, when we KNOW that we retain temperature for AT LEAST half an hour and very possibly a whole hour too?

Hold on Fisherman. You are getting yourself very badly confused. Dr Phillips said there was HEAT inside Chapman's body. So where are you getting the idea from that he stuck his hands inside her body and found it was cold? The coldness could only have been on the surface couldn't it?

There was NO other heat in the body than in a small area under the intestines. "The body was cold, except that there was a certain remaining heat, under the intestines, in the body."
"In" the body - not "on" the body. Not "the surface was cold" because no doctor would ever say that. A doctor does not feel for the surface warmth, he feels for the core warmth, given away by being conducted up to the skin when feeling for it. But I really don't know why I should go on educating you and correcting you - it more and more has me thinking of that old proverb about throwing pearls.

Yes, if we factor in outrageous numbers into the Henssge method, we will arrive at outrageous conclusions. Let's not do that.

What "outrageous" numbers are you suggesting I factored into the Henssge method? In fact, I used all the same numbers you did (see #733), estimating the core temperature as being only a little below 37.2 degrees, and using a more correct empiric correction factor (as advised by the calculator itself for an ambient temperature of 9 deg C). Nor was the conclusion "outrageous". But the Henssge method is the most irrelevant and useless nonsense to have been introduced into this thread bearing in mind that Dr. Phillips didn't take the rectal temperature, and the reported coldness at the surface tells us nothing about the temperature in the rectum.

My comment was not to you, it was to John.

[Fisherman]

Ergo, the example you made is worthless. And I told you so from the outset. The reason for me knowing this was that you quoted a medico who supposedly said that a cold body appeared to have been dead an hour only. No medico will say this, because coldness points to many hours of death.

No medico will say this???? I've given you an example of a medico, Robert Fowler, actually saying it!!!

He is misquoted. But your insights are too shallow for you to understand it. You beleive that bodies grow colder on the left side than on the right one, remember? That's your level of medical understanding.


In the example you provided, it was said that "... the body presented great lividity". I hope that you are not going to claim that we are talking about the punctate and patchy form of lividity that manifests itself between 1-2 hours? It takes 2-4 hours to reach the big patchy form that dovetails with the description "great lividity".

Your "lessons" in lividity all miss the point. You seem to want to open up the inquiry into the death of Thomas Richards in 1861 based on modern forensic knowledge! It's ridiculous. As I've already given you a lesson on the realities of lividity from Prof Bernard Knight and Payne James, the only question is what was in Robert Fowler's mind in 1861.

Now, if you google "great lividity" you will actually find that many if not most examples are from the nineteenth century and are about living people. One should suffice:

From an 1847 paper by T.B. Peacock M.D. entitled 'Case of the Malformation of the Heart"

"During the last few hours, he had violent palpitations of the heart, great lividity of the face and extremities, and extreme dyspnoea."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5822337/pdf/monjmedsci89642-0004.pdf

Hahaha! Hahahahaha!!! Lividity is here used to describe a reddened face, Herlock. Livor mortis lividity is something totally different. You cannot develop livor mortis until you are dead.
This is it, I´ll call it a day. There can be no intelligent exchange with someone who cannot understand the simplest things! As a send-off, here is what you should have read before posting:

The term lividity refers to an unnatural color of the skin. Lividity can be a useful reaction in determining the position of a body at the time of death and even whether a body was moved within the first few hours after death.

There are various forms of lividity. In a living person, a blow can result in the localized rupturing of cells and the pooling of blood . When the blood cells begin to decompose, the release of the blood forms a bluish-purple bruise.

In a living victim, bruising can be indicative of the nature of the trauma. For example, choking can leave a distinctive pattern of neck bruising that mirrors the pressure applied by the fingers.

Lividity can also result when blood flow ceases after death. The blood that was formerly flowing through the body can be drawn to the lowest point in the body by the influence of gravity. For example, if a victim was lying on her right side at the time of death, lividity would be evident on the right side of the face, hip, and on the areas of the right arm and leg that were closest to the ground.

And here is a list of the different uses of the word. Your example is number five, unless you think the poor sod had been beaten top and bruised. The number we need to use for the Prussian acid victim is number 1.
livid

[ liv-id ]SHOW IPA
EXAMPLES|WORD ORIGIN

---

adjective

1. having a discolored, bluish appearance caused by a bruise, congestion of blood vessels, strangulation, etc., as the face, flesh, hands, or nails.
2. dull blue; dark, grayish-blue.
3. enraged; furiously angry: Willful stupidity makes me absolutely livid.
4. feeling or appearing strangulated because of strong emotion.
5. reddish or flushed.
6. deathly pale; pallid; ashen: Fear turned his cheeks livid for a moment.

HAVE A WONDEREFUL LIFE, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE LAUGHS. IF I HAVE CAUGHT MY BREATH TOMORROW, I AMY TEACH YOU ON HOW "MAKING THINGS UP" IS A synonym to "LYING", as per: To tell lies and deceive people - thesaurus


Using the thesaurus
Explore related meanings

• Lies

Explore more meanings

• To cheat or trick someone

Synonyms

misspeak

verb

american to state a fact that is inaccurate deceive

verb

if something deceives you, it gives you a falseidea about something else make up

phrasal verb

to invent an explanation for something, especially in order to avoid being punished or embarrassed invent

verb

to make up a story, excuse etc that is not true lie

verb

to deliberatelysay something that is not true concoct

verb

to invent a falseexplanation or falseinformation, especially for a dishonestpurpose fabricate

verb

to make up a story or piece of information in order to make someone believesomething that is not true manufacture

verb

to make up a story that is not true mislead

verb

to make someone believe something that is incorrect or not true bend the truth

phrase

to say something that is not completelytrue in order to achieve an aim


Accordingly, you have accused me of lying. But it seems you are too gutless to admit it. Which is as sad as it is expected.

Now, I really cannot be arsed to invest more time in you and your ramblings, entertaining though they are.

At the end of the day, if I was given the choice of becoming somebody who makes things up or becoming somebody who cannot understand the simplest of things, I´d go with the first option.

How good that I don't have to choose either of them, and how fitting that I can leave the second option to your masterful control.

To-de-loo.

[The Baron]

Hold on Fisherman. You are getting yourself very badly confused. Dr Phillips said there was HEAT inside Chapman's body. So where are you getting the idea from that he stuck his hands inside her body and found it was cold? The coldness could only have been on the surface couldn't it?

I wonder why none of your company show up to correct your misconceptions.

It realy helps when you ponder for a while and re read the inquest, before you get yourself trapped like this.



The Baron

[Fisherman]

There is a problem with one of my posts, so I will only post part of it, in response to Herlocks example of "great lividity" in a living (!) person:

You have gotten it all wrong again, Herlock. The lividity spoken of in your example is the number 5 option below. We can all get red in the face in a matter of seconds. This post of mine may cause a reddish hue on YOUR face, I hope. It ought to. Possibly, there may have been some sort of congestion too.

I personally like number 3 a lot too, but for different reasons.

Livor mortis is something different; the number 1 option (although it is not actual liver mortis - that is not described in detail here. It is the collection of blood in the parts lowest in a dead body, due to gravity, getting blueishly red and giving away death. That is the kind of lividity that was seen in the prussic acid example you provided earlier.)

I really won't read any more of your posts tonight. I can only take so much of it.

livid

[ liv-id ]SHOW IPA
EXAMPLES|WORD ORIGIN

---

adjective

1. having a discolored, bluish appearance caused by a bruise, congestion of blood vessels, strangulation, etc., as the face, flesh, hands, or nails.
2. dull blue; dark, grayish-blue.
3. enraged; furiously angry: Willful stupidity makes me absolutely livid.
4. feeling or appearing strangulated because of strong emotion.
5. reddish or flushed.
6. deathly pale; pallid; ashen: Fear turned his cheeks livid for a moment

[Fisherman]

Fisherman's entire thesis seems to run as follows:



1. Within an hour of death, the rectal (core) temperature of a human corpse can only drop by about one degree from the normal (warm) 37 degrees centigrade due to the laws of physics.

2. If the rectal core temperature is warm then the body must feel warm at the surface when examined by a medic.

3. As Chapman's body did not feel warm but cold at the surface when examined by Dr Phillips. she cannot only have been dead an hour.



The flaw in this thesis should be obvious but, in case not, here is an excerpt from Bernard Knight's paper entitled 'The Evolution of Methods for Estimating the Time of Death from Body Temperature" published in Forensic Science International vol 36, 1988, which destroys points 2 and 3. Knight is commenting here on an 1880 paper by J. Wilkie Burman (who took surface measurements of a small number of dead bodies with a thermometer at regular intervals):




'His graphs showed no plateaux and, in fact, he notes that the body cools more rapidly soon after death, especially when the initial body temperature is high. This is presumably because surface measurements do not reflect the initial retention of heat in the core, as detected by rectal readings.'

https://ibb.co/j6Yxj7f

Before I go, let me correct you on this. I don't like the idea of you describing me when you don't understand what I am saying in the first place.

Point 1: Wrong. It can drop more or less than 1 degree, but the scale is a good point to embark on an understanding of the overall process. It takes a lot to produce big deviations, and the larger deviations we ask for, the more we close in on freak territory.

Point 2: That depends on what you mean by "warm rectal core temperature". The normal understanding is that the specter within which a medico can feel body warmth by touching the skin and feeling for the underlying warmth is from 0-3 hours after death. Certainly, if the body temperature is around the 37,2 degrees used as a mean temperature in the Henssge method, a medico WILL be able to feel that the body is warm to the touch, regardless of the temperature of the skin itself.

Point 3: Wrong again. It was not the surface only Phillips - or any other doctor - would have checked. If there was the kind of underlying warmth that is normally there under the three first hours after death, it would have been conducted UP TO THAT SURFACE. Consequently, when no such underlying warmth can be detected THROUGH the skin, a medico will accept that more than one hour has passed since death.

Ah! It feels good to have gotten that corrected! Now, should I put together a list that represents YOU in a biased, hostile and flawed way?

No. I don´t have to.

[Herlock Sholmes]

My comment was not to you, it was to John.

There was NO other heat in the body than in a small area under the intestines. "The body was cold, except that there was a certain remaining heat, under the intestines, in the body."




But that's the very heat that you were saying wasn't there!!! You asked John how Phillips could have "stuck his hand INSIDE Chapman's body" and not be correct in saying she was cold. But (if he did indeed stick his hand inside Chapman's body) the only thing says he felt is heat!


"In" the body - not "on" the body.

I'm not going to quibble whether there was heat "in" or "on" the body. He said there was heat there. But you told John that he was describing her as "cold". That's not true. He was expressly saying there was heat.


Not "the surface was cold" because no doctor would ever say that.

Why not? What source do you have to make that statement?


A doctor does not feel for the surface warmth,

Yes, he does.


he feels for the core warmth

No, he doesn't. It's not possible.


"given away by being conducted up to the skin when feeling for it."

That's the surface warmth then.


But I really don't know why I should go on educating you and correcting you - it more and more has me thinking of that old proverb about throwing pearls

If you want to be educated, read the extract from Prof. Knight I posted in #796 in which it is stated that "surface measurements do not reflect the initial retention of heat in the core, as detected by rectal readings". In other words, you can't detect the heat in the rectum, or core, from measurements taken at the surface. It's simple. It's there in black and white. And it's unarguable.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I wonder why none of your company show up to correct your misconceptions.

It realy helps when you ponder for a while and re read the inquest, before you get yourself trapped like this.



The Baron

The inquest says that Dr Phillips found heat in Chapman's body. Fisherman was telling John that there was no heat. Fisherman is the one who is trapped.

[Herlock Sholmes]

There is a problem with one of my posts, so I will only post part of it, in response to Herlocks example of "great lividity" in a living (!) person:

You have gotten it all wrong again, Herlock. The lividity spoken of in your example is the number 5 option below. We can all get red in the face in a matter of seconds. This post of mine may cause a reddish hue on YOUR face, I hope. It ought to. Possibly, there may have been some sort of congestion too.

I personally like number 3 a lot too, but for different reasons.

Livor mortis is something different; the number 1 option (although it is not actual liver mortis - that is not described in detail here. It is the collection of blood in the parts lowest in a dead body, due to gravity, getting blueishly red and giving away death. That is the kind of lividity that was seen in the prussic acid example you provided earlier.)

I really won't read any more of your posts tonight. I can only take so much of it.

livid

[ liv-id ]SHOW IPA
EXAMPLES|WORD ORIGIN

---

adjective

1. having a discolored, bluish appearance caused by a bruise, congestion of blood vessels, strangulation, etc., as the face, flesh, hands, or nails.
2. dull blue; dark, grayish-blue.
3. enraged; furiously angry: Willful stupidity makes me absolutely livid.
4. feeling or appearing strangulated because of strong emotion.
5. reddish or flushed.
6. deathly pale; pallid; ashen: Fear turned his cheeks livid for a moment

You have gotten it all wrong again, Herlock. The lividity spoken of in your example is the number 5 option below. We can all get red in the face in a matter of seconds. This post of mine may cause a reddish hue on YOUR face, I hope. It ought to.


You didn't even read it properly. The doctor was describing "great lividity" in the face AND extremities. The point was that he used the expression "great lividity" in respect of a living person. The exact same expression used by Robert Fowler. If Dr Peacock was merely speaking of the very common condition of red face and hands why did he used the expression "great lividity"? Why didn't he just say the patient had red face and hands? But, if by "great lividity", he just meant "very red" was Robert Fowler also saying that the body of Thomas Richards was very red? How can we possibly know one way or the other?


Livor mortis is something different; the number 1 option. That is the lividity that was seen in the prussic acid example you provided earlier.

But Robert Fowler didn't mention "Liver mortis" He spoke of "great lividity". The exact same thing that Dr Peacock spoke of in a living person. How can you possibly know what Robert Fowler meant???

It doesn't matter anyway because you are ignoring the key issue which is that Fowler noted that the body was cold YET at the same time estimated time of death as one hour earlier. According to you, no medic could possibly do it. Well he did!

[Herlock Sholmes]

Before I go, let me correct you on this. I don't like the idea of you describing me when you don't understand what I am saying in the first place.

Point 1: Wrong. It can drop more or less than 1 degree, but the scale is a good point to embark on an understanding of the overall process. It takes a lot to produce big deviations, and the larger deviations we ask for, the more we close in on freak territory.

Point 2: That depends on what you mean by "warm rectal core temperature". The normal understanding is that the specter within which a medico can feel body warmth by touching the skin and feeling for the underlying warmth is from 0-3 hours after death. Certainly, if the body temperature is around the 37,2 degrees used as a mean temperature in the Henssge method, a medico WILL be able to feel that the body is warm to the touch, regardless of the temperature of the skin itself.

Point 3: Wrong again. It was not the surface only Phillips - or any other doctor - would have checked. If there was the kind of underlying warmth that is normally there under the three first hours after death, it would have been conducted UP TO THAT SURFACE. Consequently, when no such underlying warmth can be detected THROUGH the skin, a medico will accept that more than one hour has passed since death.

Ah! It feels good to have gotten that corrected! Now, should I put together a list that represents YOU in a biased, hostile and flawed way?

No. I don´t have to.

Point 1: Wrong. It can drop more or less than 1 degree, but the scale is a good point to embark on an understanding of the overall process. It takes a lot to produce big deviations, and the larger deviations we ask for, the more we close in on freak territory.

A mere nitpick. You previously said the rate according to "the laws of physics" is 1.5 deg F per hour although, as we all now know, you cocked it up and said 1.5 deg C per hour, which should have been 0.8 dec C per hour. The precise figure isn't important. Your key point is that within an hour the core temperature MUST remain warm because it can't deviate far from 37.2 degrees. I think I've got that totally right but you just wanted to say "wrong" because you are being wilfully difficult.


Point 2: That depends on what you mean by "warm rectal core temperature". The normal understanding is that the specter within which a medico can feel body warmth by touching the skin and feeling for the underlying warmth is from 0-3 hours after death. Certainly, if the body temperature is around the 37,2 degrees used as a mean temperature in the Henssge method, a medico WILL be able to feel that the body is warm to the touch, regardless of the temperature of the skin itself.

Well it's really what YOU mean and what you mean is a rectal core temperature that is not far away from 37.2 degrees. So when I said that your belief is that "If the rectal core temperature is warm then the body must feel warm at the surface when examined by a medic" that was absolutely correct and I have no idea why you are quibbling. [The notion that a medic can feel what you have now taken to referring as "the underlying warmth" - i.e. the core temperature - by touching the skin is, of course, pure nonsense for which you've never provided any support]

Point 3: Wrong again. It was not the surface only Phillips - or any other doctor - would have checked. If there was the kind of underlying warmth that is normally there under the three first hours after death, it would have been conducted UP TO THAT SURFACE. Consequently, when no such underlying warmth can be detected THROUGH the skin, a medico will accept that more than one hour has passed since death.

How can a doctor check anything other than the warmth or otherwise of the body without a thermometer? In the case of Chapman the body was, unusually, cut open but all a doctor can normally do is feel the surface. So when I said "As Chapman's body did not feel warm but cold at the surface when examined by Dr Phillips. she cannot only have been dead an hour" that IS your theory in a nutshell. It's amazing that you are denying it. Well perhaps not so amazing in light of what Bernard Knight tells us. And what Bernard Knight tells us destroys your entire theory, as you must realize.




Ah! It feels good to have gotten that corrected! Now, should I put together a list that represents YOU in a biased, hostile and flawed way?



Well my list is this:




1. By no method in 1888, as today, could a doctor or pathologist accurately and reliably estimate a time of death.




2. Least of all was it possible to estimate a reliable time of death by feeling the body temperature of the corpse.




3. A dead body could easily feel cold after an hour, especially if in the open air on a cold night (with part of the body cut open and exposed) where the victim suffered from a wasting disease and was seriously malnourished.




I've disproved your list with one quote from an expert. Good luck disproving mine! (Well you won't because everything I say is supported by expert sources)



Give it up Fish. You’ve lost every single point without exception.

Dr Phillips TOD estimate can very safely be dismissed as unreliable. If only you found it so easy to dismiss those pesky witnesses.

[Herlock Sholmes]

One more extract for the education of Fisherman. Well, I know he won't read it properly or at all so the other members of the forum might appreciate it.


This is a direct quote from the paper mentioned by Prof Bernard Knight in the earlier extract I posted, "On the Rate of Cooling of the Human Body After Death", 1880, by J. Wilkie Burman M.D.

"In the last edition of his larger work on Medical Jurisprudence (2^nd ed, vol i p.47, 1873), Dr Taylor draws attention to the “fallacious results which may arise from the customary method of judging of the degree of coldness of the body by the mere and unaided sense of touch.” He truly says that “the dead human skin is a good conductor of heat and thus the surface may appear cold (though it be not really so) to a moderately warm hand; and that, that moreover, “the condition of the hand itself may lead to an erroneous impression,” for instance, if the two hands be of different temperatures, a recently dead body may appear cold to one and warm to the other.” And he very rightly, therefore, urges that “in all observations of the temperature of the dead body, a thermometer should, if possible be employed, and be applied, not only to the exterior surface of the body, but also to the interior parts.’


FOOTNOTE

"The retention of considerable heat in the viscera for a long period after death, and even after the surface of the body feels cool, is an occurrence that I have frequently noticed, and cannot fail to have been observed, from time to time, by those who, like myself, have had much experience in post-mortem examinations. Sir Robert Christison relates his experience with regard to this subject in the British Medical Journal for 24^th January 1874, though he also states that he “never had the curiosity to ascertain the actual temperature by means of the thermometer;” and in the observations of Drs Taylor and Wilks above referred to, it was remarked that in two cases, seventeen and eighteen hours respectively after death, when the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere was as low as 49 deg Fahr, yet the viscera retained a temperature of no less then 76 deg Fahr., the surface of the body feeling cool; whilst in another case referred to by those observers, the surface of the abdomen being of temperature 65 deg Fahr, the temperature of the interior was no less than 85 deg Fahr, and this ten hours after death."


So we find that Victorian doctors did EXACTLY what Fisherman has been desperately trying to convince us that they didn't do, namely judge the degree of coldness of the body by the mere and unaided sense of touch! Just fancy that. And it's funny that we find Dr Alfred Swain Taylor - the author of the leading textbook of medical jurisprudence during the Victorian period - telling us that the surface of a body 'may appear cold'. We also find Dr Burman telling us that he has personally noted occasions when "the surface of the body" feels cool when there is still considerable heat in the core. This is odd because Fisherman, that great expert of the practice of Victorian doctors, told us this earlier very evening that a doctor would never feel for the surface warmth and would never say that the surface was cold!! Perhaps he thinks Dr Phillips had magic hands which were able to detect warmth on a body that appeared cold on the surface.

[Herlock Sholmes]

A little addition for you Fish:


From "On Poisons, In Relation to Jurisprudence and Medicine" by Alfred Swaine Taylor (1848), p.533:


‘The post-mortem appearances are very slight. Externally the body is commonly livid, or the skin is tinged of a violet colour..."


And so the “great lividity” was clearly a symptom of the Prussia acid and not livor mortis as you had assumed.

[Fisherman]

The inquest says that Dr Phillips found heat in Chapman's body. Fisherman was telling John that there was no heat. Fisherman is the one who is trapped.

That's funny, because I could have sworn it was you.

[Fisherman]

There was NO other heat in the body than in a small area under the intestines. "The body was cold, except that there was a certain remaining heat, under the intestines, in the body."




But that's the very heat that you were saying wasn't there!!! You asked John how Phillips could have "stuck his hand INSIDE Chapman's body" and not be correct in saying she was cold. But (if he did indeed stick his hand inside Chapman's body) the only thing says he felt is heat!

No, he does not say that the only thing he felt inside the body was heat. He says the only heat he could find was under the intestines, and that otherwise the body was COLD. And that means that whichever other area inside or on the outside of the body he felt, there was NO heat.


"In" the body - not "on" the body.

I'm not going to quibble whether there was heat "in" or "on" the body. He said there was heat there. But you told John that he was describing her as "cold". That's not true. He was expressly saying there was heat.

And of course, I have written this a thousand times. So there is no misleading at all involved. Phillips said the body was cold. The area under the intestines was the only exception, and I dare say we all know this quite well, you, John and I.

Not "the surface was cold" because no doctor would ever say that.

Why not? What source do you have to make that statement?

A thousand victorian doctors and todays collected knowledge would be the source. What the doctors felt (and feel) for was always the core warmth, conducted up to the surface when the fingers are put towards it. The target areas would have been where the vessels are shallowly placed and many.


A doctor does not feel for the surface warmth,

Yes, he does.

No, he does not, because he knows that skin warmth will disappear in a matter of ten to twenty minutes as per Seddon-Smith (the guy you claim has me panicking). But he ALSO knows that the underlying warmth can be felt through the skin when putting the fingers against it.


he feels for the core warmth

No, he doesn't. It's not possible.

It is not. Otherwise, the procedure of feeling for warmth would not have been employed after the twenty minutes it takes the skin to grow cold. When will you learn?

"given away by being conducted up to the skin when feeling for it."

That's the surface warmth then.

It is the warmth from the core, felt THROUGH the skin. Of course, the skin takes on the warmth from underneath as the medico puts his fingers to that skin, but the warmth he feels is core warmth, seeping into the skin. Once the doctor removes his fingers, the skin will cool off quickly, whereas the core will NOT do so. The warmth from it can be felt through the skin for a period of roughly three hours in the normal case. And that is why no victorian doctor will ever say "the body appeared to be only one hour dead, but was cold". The reason is that the ONLY parameter he had to work with that could give away a probable TOD only one hour away was body warmth. If the body was cold, then. he would have no other parameter that could implicate a TOD one hour away only.


But I really don't know why I should go on educating you and correcting you - it more and more has me thinking of that old proverb about throwing pearls

If you want to be educated, read the extract from Prof. Knight I posted in #796 in which it is stated that "surface measurements do not reflect the initial retention of heat in the core, as detected by rectal readings". In other words, you can't detect the heat in the rectum, or core, from measurements taken at the surface. It's simple. It's there in black and white. And it's unarguable.

True enough! But - of course - what he REALLY says is something that you miss out on, true to form. I will explain it to you, though - also true to form.

Of course a surface measurement will not produce any core temperature. The surface will always be cooler than the core, and moreover, the heat in the core will not dissolve evenly - the innermost parts of it will retain the warmth longest, while the parts closer to the cool skin and surroundings while from cold swifter.

This is a universal truth that no doctor or layman with any insights at all would challenge.

And would you beleive it - I have never claimed that the EXACT core temperature will be readable on the surface. That was never going to happen! If you think this is what I am saying, you have misunderstood me totally. Maybe that is where your charming accusations of me making things up come from? Another misunderstanding of yours?

What Can be felt via the skin for up to three hours or so after death is nevertheless core warmth. it can -and will - be picked up on by medicos if it is still around in a measure that allows for it. And as it happens, it IS around in detectable measures for around three hours in the dead body.

Of course, if the temperature is 37 degrees Celsius inside the core, it will not be 37 degrees on the skin! But it will be quite enough for the doctor the feel that the core has warmth to give away! During the three hours after death, that warmth in the core will give away enough heat for the doctor to pick up on it through the skin. After that, there will still be plenty of warmth - but not enough to reach through the skin for the doctor to feel it. This stage is reached after 4-6 hours. Now the doctor will say that the body is cold to the touch, although in fact, the core will retain a slowly disappearing heat for around 24 hours. The last twenty hours of the process, the doctor will not be able to feel it, though.

There is one thing that is interesting, and that isn where we return to professor Knight: The plateau during the first half hour up to a full hour, when the body heat does not sink at all. And THIS is what Knight sparks about - he says that although the core temperature (as checked via a rectal reading) will establish that plateau, measuring the temperature at the skin will NOT do so. And that will owe to how the skin is insulated from the core, and how it will be subjected to a process of sinking temperature for that reason - the ambient temperatures will make the skin temperature fall, whereas it will not affect the core temperature during the plateau stage. I will guide you through it, word for word:

"surface measurements do not reflect the initial retention of heat in the core (meaning that we cannot note from skin temperatures that the core is not sinking in temperature during th initial half hour or hour), as detected by rectal readings (precisely: the rectal temperature will reflect the core temperature, and in there, the temperature will not fall initially)". In other words, you can't detect the heat in the rectum, or core, from measurements taken at the surface. (which is exactly what I am saying - the precise temperature of the core will not be legible in the skin)"

However! This does NOT mean that warmth from the core cannot be felt through the skin after death!