_Whether the wounds observed in the body were necessarily of a mortal nature, or sufficiently severe to have caused immediate death?_—It will be generally impossible to solve this problem without the aid of dissection, for although such injuries may appear extensive, we have already in the course of the present inquiries shewn the fallacies to which such indications are exposed, (_see our chapter on wounds, vol._ ii, _page_ 116) and the practitioner who ventures to give his judgment on such an occasion, without adequate data, will render himself contemptible in the eyes of the profession, and dishonest in the opinion of the public.
_Whether they were inflicted during life?_—In discriminating between a wound inflicted upon the living body, and one which has been artfully occasioned after death, for the purpose of embarrassing judicial inquiry, it will be essential to observe, whether any hemorrhage has taken place, externally, or internally, and, moreover, to ascertain whether the blood so effused had coagulated. An instructive illustration of this point is furnished in the very extraordinary trial[15] of _Green_, _Berry_, and _Hill_ in the year 1678, for the murder of _Sir Edmonsbury Godfrey_, a zealous protestant magistrate, during the pretended popish plots in the reign of Charles the second. It appeared from the evidence of one _Praunce_, that _Sir Edmonsbury_ was strangled by a handkerchief in Somerset house, on a Saturday night, and after remaining concealed until the following Wednesday, he was carried at midnight into the fields beyond Soho, where he was thrown into a ditch, and his own sword thrust through his body, in order to excite a belief that he had committed suicide. Upon the trial, Messrs. _Skillard_ and _Cambridge_, surgeons, stated that the sword must have been passed through the body after death, _as there was no evacuation of blood_, which must have happened had such a wound been inflicted during life.[15] With regard, however, the fact of hemorrhage being received as a test of life, a few observations may be necessary; it must be remembered that extensive wounds may be inflicted on the living body, with but little or no effusion of blood, but such wounds always belong to the class of _lacerations_, see _vol._ ii, _p._ 123. On the other hand, the knife of the anatomist not unfrequently draws considerable blood from the dead body, and wounds have been known to bleed long after life has fled; a fact which, as we have already observed, has been raised by superstition into prophetic importance. The orifice of a vein that may have been opened during life will sometimes bleed afresh after death; this occurred to a very considerable extent in the body of the Prince Royal of Sweden, who had died of apoplexy. _John Lees_,[16] the subject of the noted inquest at Oldham, bled after he was laid in his coffin; but, under such circumstances, the blood is _never_ found in the state of coagulation.