How does a recently dead body behave?

Asked by absalom (7552) October 23rd, 2010

This might offend some, I don’t know. Question is mostly for doctors who might have some experience with this stuff.

If someone were to die in your house, for example, and if your house were far removed from any city or town so that you’d be responsible for preserving, to the best of your ability, this corpse, for perhaps half a day, what immediate effects would you be able to observe on the surface of the body?

I know that bowels are voided, etc., but what I’m curious about is how the skin, hair, eyes, mouth, fingernails and toenails react to death.

Does a dead body sweat? (I think it doesn’t, but can someone explain why?) Will it remain dry in extreme heat?

Are the fingernails and toenails discolored? Within the first eight hours?

Does the hair change at all? Is it visibly less lustrous or is that a poeticism only? Might it fall out?

Does the skin tighten or loosen or stay the same? What happens to wrinkles, if anything?

Are the veins less or more visible beneath the skin?

Does, or could, the body begin to make noises?

Other than being paler, what might the lips look like?

Do the teeth react? Gums?

If you were to prick the face of the newly dead body with a needle, would it bleed? More or less than ‘usual’? How does blood behave differently in the body after death, i.e. is it stagnant / unflowing?

If the dead person was allergic to something throughout his life, would his body react shortly after death to the things he was allergic to? Would his face still swell were a bee to sting it?

Do closed eyelids ever open on their own?

Is a person’s ‘last exhalation’ before death actually occurring before death or is it already a part of the fluidic (ex)purgation of death?

Were a woman to die during her period, would the body bleed on its own in death?

If a very, very recently dead woman were to be genitally stimulated, would orgasm or similar muscle contractions be possible?

If the dead woman is pregnant and has a visible linea nigra, does the marking stay visible after death? For how long? Does it eventually disappear? (Also: what is the earliest the linea nigra might appear in a living pregnant woman?)

Regarding pregnancy in death: how long does the fetus continue to ‘live’ after the death of its mother? Minutes, hours?

And, in turn, how does the body of a fetus respond to its own death? I imagine this would have something to do with how developed it is. Would it shrink, move, kick at all?

Your help is appreciated.