“Most of the people we pick up die in nursing homes,” says Williams, “but sometimes we get people who died of gunshot wounds or in a car-wreck. Victims of trauma and violent deaths usually need extensive facial reconstruction, a highly skilled and time-consuming task. Williams performs this so that family and friends can view their departed loved one at the funeral. Embalming involves treating the body with chemicals that slow down the decomposition process, primarily to restore it as closely as possible to its natural state before death. Her work involves collecting recently deceased bodies from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and sometimes beyond, and preparing them for their funeral, by washing and embalming them. Now 28 years old, she estimates that she has worked on something like 1,000 bodies. Having been raised in a family-run funeral home in north Texas, and worked there all her life, she has seen and handled dead bodies on an almost daily basis since her childhood. Williams speaks softly and has a happy-go-lucky demeanour that belies the gruesome nature of her work. “Usually, the fresher a body is, the easier it is for me to work on.” “It might take a little bit of force to break this up,” says mortician Holly Williams, lifting John’s arm and gently bending it at the fingers, elbow and wrist. This causes the muscles to become rigid, and locks the joints. After death, the cells are depleted of their energy source, and the protein filaments become locked in place. In life, muscle cells contracts and relax due to the actions of two filamentous proteins, called actin and myosin, which slide along each other. Then, rigor mortis – the stiffness of death – sets in, starting in the eyelids, jaw and neck muscles, before working its way into the trunk and then the limbs. Damaged blood cells spill out of broken vessels and, aided by gravity, settle in the capillaries and small veins, discolouring the skin.īody temperature also begins to drop, until it has acclimatised to its surroundings. This usually begins in the liver, which is enriched in enzymes, and in the brain, which has high water content eventually, though, all other tissues and organs begin to break down in this way. Enzymes start to digest cell membranes and then leak out as the cells break down. Soon after the heart stops beating, cells become deprived of oxygen, and their acidity increases as the toxic by-products of chemical reactions begin to accumulate inside them. It could, for example, lead to new, more accurate ways of estimating time of death, and of finding bodies that have been hidden in clandestine graves.ĭecomposition begins several minutes after death, with a process called autolysis, or self-digestion. A better understanding of the cadaveric ecosystem – how it changes over time, and how it interacts with and alters the ecology of its wider environment – could have important applications in forensic science. We still know very little about human decay, but the growth of forensic research facilities, or ‘body farms,’ together with the availability and ever-decreasing cost of techniques such as DNA sequencing, now enables researchers to study the process in ways that were not possible just a few years ago. A growing number of scientists view a rotting corpse as the cornerstone of a vast and complex ecosystem, which emerges soon after death and flourishes and evolves as decomposition proceeds. a rotting corpse is teeming with lifeįar from being ‘dead,’ however, a rotting corpse is teeming with life. The sight of a rotting corpse is, for most of us, unsettling at best, and repulsive and frightening at worst, the stuff of nightmares. Time of death is a crucial piece of information in any murder investigation, but the many factors influencing the decomposition process can make it extremely difficult to estimate. When the body is eventually discovered, the first thing that the police detectives and forensics experts working on the case will try to establish is when death occurred. A murderer might bury his victim in a shallow grave, or leave their body at the scene of the crime, exposed to the elements. It also serves to slow down the decomposition process, so that family members can remember their loved one as they once were, rather than as they now are.įor others, the end is less dignified. This is a way of showing respect to the deceased, and of bringing a sense of closure to bereaved family. Most of us die natural deaths and, at least in the West, are given a traditional burial. Most of us would rather not think about what happens to our selves and loved ones after death.
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