The decisions, however, which such a custom was intended to facilitate, were generally perverted by the delusions of credulity and superstition. Among the more prominent instances of the latter source of fallacy, we may notice a belief that has extended even into later days—that upon the presence of the murderer the wounds of his victim will bleed afresh!
"O gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry's wounds
Open their congeal'd mouths, and bleed afresh!
Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity;
For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells;
Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,
Provokes this deluge most unnatural."—
Richard III. act 1. s. 2.
Situation and attitude of the body.—It cannot be too generally known that, upon the discovery of a dead body, its situation and attitude should never be disturbed until it has been examined by competent persons. The information which the medical inquirer may obtain from his observations upon the position of the dead body, is often important and decisive; it may even, in some cases, furnish data for determining whether the death was occasioned by accident, suicide, or murder. We may, for example, find the deceased in a posture which he could never have himself assumed, whence we should be led to conclude that he had not fallen by his own hands. In the case of the disputed suicide of the Earl of Essex[1] in the
- ↑ See the trial of Lawrence Braddon and Hugh Spake, for a misdemeanour, in suborning witnesses to prove the Earl of Essex was murdered by his keepers. Feb. 7, 16S3. Sta. Tri. vol. iii.
