The evidence of live birth in civil is somewhat different from that required in criminal cases. The viability of the child is determined in Scotland by its _crying_; in France, by its respiration; in Germany, “the LIVE BIRTH of a child is to be held proven when it has been heard to cry by witnesses of unimpeachable veracity present at its birth”; but in England, the pulsation of the child‘s heart, or any tremulous motion of the muscles, however slight, has been considered as satisfactory proof of live birth.[15] [15] Fyshe or Fisher _v._ Palmer, in 1806. According to Blackstone, “crying, indeed, is the strongest evidence, but it is not the _only_ evidence”; and Coke remarks, “If it be born alive, it is sufficient though it be not heard to cry, for peradventure it may be born dumb.” =Signs of Live Birth prior to Respiration, and independent of it.=--(1) Negative.--Signs of intra-uterine death, _i.e._ putrefaction, or “intra-uterine maceration,” or of such imperfect development that it could not have been born alive. (2) Positive.--Injuries to the child showing that it must have been born alive. 1. Negative.--_Intra-uterine Putrefaction._--This condition differs in some remarkable points from putrefaction in air. The body is extremely flaccid and flattened, the bones of the cranium moving easily on one another. The skin of the hands and other parts of the body bear the evidence of prolonged soaking in fluid. In parts, the skin is whitish, or of a reddish-brown or coppery-red colour, without any trace of green, which is always present when putrefaction takes place in the air. The cuticle may be raised in blisters, and be easily detached from the true skin. The denuded patches are moist and greasy, and exude a stinking, reddish-coloured serous fluid. The face is flattened, and the features distorted. In one case that Husband attended of intra-uterine death of the fœtus in a primipara, and where putrefaction was far advanced, the scalp burst during delivery, and the brain was poured out. Should, however, the child be exposed to the air, it may soon acquire the appearances proper to putrefaction in that medium. If the child, immediately after birth, be thrown into water, the putrefactive changes would be like those of intra-uterine decomposition. In this case the lungs must be examined for the evidence of death by drowning. 2. Positive.--Evidence that injuries found on the body could not have been inflicted during birth, or accidentally after birth. On this subject it is scarcely possible to give an opinion one way or the other. All the medical witness can fairly state is, that, from the condition of the lungs, respiration has or has not taken place; that, in the former case, it is not easy to state whether the injuries were the cause of death or inflicted after death.