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On-Scene Body Assessment
Published in Kevin L. Erskine, Erica J. Armstrong, Water-Related Death Investigation, 2021
Kevin l. Erskine, Erica J. Armstrong
Algor mortis is the postmortem cooling of the body. After death, heat is transferred from the body to a solid surface, fluid, or into the air via the physical processes of conduction, radiation, or convection.2 Cooling will continue at a certain rate until the body reaches the ambient temperature. As previously mentioned in Chapter 1, the rate of cooling occurs much more rapidly with immersion in cold water. Since the skin is the closest to the air, cooling occurs more rapidly there, and thus the measurement of the core temperature gives a better representation of the body’s temperature. The core body temperature can be measured by either placing a thermometer through a small incision of the upper right abdominal quadrant into the liver or inserting the thermometer into the rectum (personal protective equipment or gloves must be worn and proper disposal done after measurement). This measurement may be done by the C/ME investigator or pathologist, ideally on the scene, since the measured body temperature would conceivably be closer to the time of death. This may also be done upon arrival of the body at the C/ME office.
Modern-Day Sherlocks
Published in Thomas W. Young, The Sherlock Effect, 2018
Let me interrupt with this side note: please keep in mind that rigor mortis—a term in Latin for the stiffening of the muscles after death—and livor mortis or lividity—the settling of noncirculating blood with gravity—occur much quicker after death in a small child than in an adult. Also, the decline in body temperature after death—referred to in Latin as algor mortis—also occurs much quicker after death in a child than in an adult if…if…the child was dead.
Withdrawal Aversion as a Useful Heuristic for Critical Care Decisions
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2019
Tomasz Żuradzki, Piotr Grzegorz Nowak
Additional support for such a conclusion comes from the other concept of organism developed in the context of end-of-life care. This concept, proposed among others by Julius Korein and Michael Nair-Collins, states that living organisms are systems capable of reducing entropy inside themselves by maintaining the homeostasis of extracellular fluid. From such a perspective, the essence of organisms is that they are capable of resisting the chemical and thermal equilibrium of an environment (Korein 1978; Nair-Collins 2018). This property distinguishes them from inanimate things, such as a hot cup of tea, which inevitably cools to the temperature of its surroundings. Taking this view into account, it is even easier to realize that ventilator-dependent patients might only have the status of organisms if they are considered as wholes together with ventilator. Only as such wholes are they capable of entropy reduction. Without ventilators, the fight against entropy increase is impossible, and the body would soon reach the state of algor mortis (i.e., it will reduce in temperature to match the surrounding ambient temperature, like a hot cup of tea left on a desk).
Post-mortem interval estimative through determination of catalase and Δ-aminolevulinate dehydratase activities in hepatic, renal, skeletal muscle and cerebral tissues of Swiss mice
Published in Biomarkers, 2019
Jaini J. Paltian, Caren A. R. da Fonseca, Mikaela P. Pinz, Cristiane Luchese, Ethel Antunes Wilhelm
Determination of cause and the time of death or post-mortem interval (PMI) is one of the most important and frequently asked questions in forensic science. After the death of an individual occur different process of degradation and putrefaction in the body, such as algor mortis, livor mortis, rigor mortis, DNA (Watson 2010) and RNA degradation (Bauer 2003), metabolites concentrations, enzymes activity (Knight 1996, Henssge and Madea 2007), among others that can provide an estimate PMI. These changes that advance in an orderly manner until the disintegration of the body are highly important in determining PMI.