The apparent healthy condition of the flesh after death is produced by the favorable temperature that is maintained, dryness of the atmosphere, etc., together with the general favorable conditions of the subject, which will render the preservation of such remains quite perfect, in some instances for a surprisingly long time. It is shown that disease of long standing completely exhausts the vital fluids before death, especially when the functions of the body have failed to produce the necessary nutrition. Thus it will be observed that the process of decomposition is very different than when the system is full of albumenoids and watery fluids, notwithstanding the tissues may have been seized upon by putridity before death. With consumptives, the disease reduces the flesh to dry parchment, or nearly so, leaving but a very small portion of water in the system. Hence, as putrefaction is impossible in the absence of moisture, and the active agent, albumen, equally reduced, decomposition of such substances that remain ensues only by a process of decay, slow combustion or oxidation, the slowly uniting of oxygen with the substance. In this the constituent parts of the animal tissues break up into simpler compounds by the chemical changes that nature produces, and differs from other forms of putrefaction only by the length of time employed. In cases like typhoid fever, the flesh, after death, assumes more of a putrid and sloughing condition, as the fluids are not so completely exhausted as in the former disease, thus leaving more of the active agents in the body for its immediate destruction. When death is the result of a putrid malady, putrefaction begins almost immediately when the body grows cold; its effects are noticeable much sooner when the atmosphere is warm. In general, in our climate, the work of decomposition becomes evident after from thirty-five to forty hours. Its first effects are noticeable on the skin of the stomach; this takes on a greenish discoloration, which soon spreads and covers the whole surface of the body; at the same time everything is seized upon by what is termed putridity; the moist parts soften and decay; little by little the flesh sinks and grows watery, and is thus carried away or burned up by the air’s oxygen.