A New Test of Death – Electrical Stimulation of Muscles

1878

A New Test of Death.

In the course of his researches on the electrical stimulation of dead muscles, Kappeler subjected twenty corpses to the action of various electric currents, noting the time of disappearance of contractility. In persons emaciated by chronic maladies it disappeared much more rapidly than in well-nourished individuals, or those who had had acute disease. It disappeared seven minutes after death at the quickest, and at six and a half hours at the slowest. In cases where a rise of temperature is observed after death, electric contractility persists longest. So long as there remains the least flicker of life the contractions continue intact. In the most prolonged faints, in the deepest lethargies, in poisoning by carbonic oxide, chloroform, etc., there is contraction so long as life lasts. But if the muscles make no response to the electrical stimulation, Kappeler pronounces life extinct.