attention of those who profess to aid the administration of Justice, by the lights of science. We have, therefore, first to inquire into _the circumstances under which this natural erosion of the stomach is known to take place_. _Mr. John Hunter_[183] details the history of three examples, in which the stomach was considerably perforated. Two of the men had died shortly after having their skulls fractured, and the third was a man who had been hanged, so that in each of these cases the person had been deprived of life by violence; whence _Dr. Adams_[184] inferred, that _Mr. Hunter_ limited the action of the gastric juice on the stomach to such as died from violent and sudden causes; and many physiologists have, accordingly, supposed that solution of the coats of the stomach never takes place, except where the person has died suddenly; this, however, is an inference, as _Mr. Burns_[185] has very justly observed, “by no means warranted by the general tenour of _Mr. Hunter’s_ essay,” indeed he expressly states, that “there are few dead bodies in which the stomach is not, _at its great end_, in some degree digested;” “and any one,” continues _Mr. Hunter_, “who is acquainted with the art of dissection, can easily trace the gradations from the smallest to the greatest.” The consideration of the vast importance of this fact, and frequent opportunities of investigating the subject, induced _Mr. Burns_ to collect the observations which he had made during the dissection of those bodies in which he found the stomach digested; and these observations, he informs us, have led him to conclude, that the phenomenon in question is neither so rare in its occurrence as some have imagined, nor confined to such subjects as had been, previous to death, in a healthy condition; they have also convinced him, that other parts of the stomach, besides the large end, may be occasionally acted on by the gastric juice. “That the digestion of the coats of the stomach after death is not a very rare occurrence, I think myself authorised to infer, from my having examined nine bodies in which the solution had proceeded to such an extent as to have made holes of considerable size through that viscus; and, besides these nine instances in which the digestion of part of the stomach was complete, I have had occasion to see, in opening this viscus, various degrees of dissolution of its villous coat.”[186]