Zsako[77] gives a method for determining the interval since death by muscular phenomena. Tapping with a percussion hammer on certain muscles of the body excites a reflex contraction up to from an hour and a half to two hours after death. The contraction may be elicited in the same manner on the living, but it is more evident on a cadaver owing to the absence of antagonistic tonus in the muscles. Some muscles may move for four hours after death. Tapping along the radius from the elbow downward, he says, a point is found where the stroke causes extension of the hand; tapping along the radius above the wrist makes the thumb bend; tapping on the spaces between the bones of the hand closes up the corresponding fingers; tapping on the back of the foot extends the toes, on the leg adducts the foot, on the tibia along the middle third extends the leg. When the lower third of the thigh is tapped across the muscles move, and if the back is struck between the scapula and the spine the shoulder blades move toward each other. If there is no response the person must be dead from two to four hours. I have had no experience with this method. [77] _Münchener medizinische Wochenschrift_, January 18, 1916. Satre[78] reported that many soldiers brought into the dressing-stations apparently dead from shock, head or spinal wounds, or gas asphyxiation, were revived after artificial respiration had been applied, sometimes for even six hours before results were obtained. Two tests were used to find out whether the patient was alive or not. In such cases ten c.c. of a 20 per cent. alkaline solution of fluorescine is injected subcutaneously, and if there is any circulation this dye will be carried to the eye and turn the conjunctiva green. The second test is to push a fine puncture-needle into the spleen or liver and thus remove a particle of the pulp. This pulp is put on blue litmus-paper and drawn free from blood. If the litmus-paper turns red the man is dead; if it remains blue he is alive. The reaction of the living pulp is alkaline, blue; this becomes acid, red, a half-hour after death; an hour after death the acid reaction is quite marked. [78] _Presse Médicale_, Paris, xxiv, 66. CHAPTER V ABORTION Abortion, as the term is used by physicians, in its widest sense is the ejection or extraction of a fetus from the womb at any time before term. The word is popularly contrasted with miscarriage, where the fetus is ejected through disease or accident; abortion in the lay sense supposes artificial, and commonly criminal, extraction of the fetus. Abortion (from _aboriri_, to perish) etymologically has an association with destruction of life, but the name is given by physicians to a removal of any premature fetus, even if it is viable. Strictly, however, abortion is an interruption of pregnancy before the fetus is viable, and premature labor is such an interruption after the fetus is viable. Throughout this chapter the words are used in this sense.