STRANGE ATTITUDES IN DEATH.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1209, 26 July 1884, Page 3

STRANGE ATTITUDES IN DEATH.

Professor C. E. Brown-Sequard writes that at the battle of Williamsburg, a XT hi led States Zouave was shot directly through the forehead as he was climbing oyer a low fence, and the body was found in the last attitude in life, one leg half over the fence, the body crouching backwards. One hand, partially clenched and raised to the level of the forehead, presented the palm forward as if to ward off an approaching evil. A brakesman of a freight car on the Nashville and Cbattanoga Railroad waa killed by a shot between the ayes, fired by a guerilla. The murdered man was screwing down the brakes at the moment of the shot. After death the body remained fixed, the arms rigidly extended on the wheel of the brakes. The pipe which he had bean smoking remained still clasped between bis teeth. 'I he conservation of the last altitude can take pli.ce in other circumstances than sudden deaths irom wounds to the brain, Ilx- heart, or the lungs, although an injure in a vital organ is the most frequent cense of the phenomenon. _ A detail of United States soldiers, foraging

near Goldsboro, N.C., came suddenly upon a party of Southern cavalry dismounted. The lat'er immediately sprang to their saddles and, after a volley had been fired at them, they all but one rode awn*. That one was left standing with one fi.ot in the stirrup; one hand, the left, grasping the bridle rein and mane of his horse, the right hand clinching the barrel of his carbine near the muzzle, the butt ot his carbine resting on the ground. The man’* head was turned over the right shoulder, apparently watching the approach of the attacking party. He was called upon to surrender, without response, and upon a near approach and examination be was found to be rigid in death, in the singular attitude above described. Great difficulty was experienced in forcing the mane of the horse from his left hand, and the carbine from his Hgb f . tin the battlefield of Beaumont, near fcK.li.ti, in 1870, the dead body of a uddicr was found half sitting, half lying on the ground, delicately holding a tin goblet between bis thumb and forefinger, and directing it toward an absent mouth. While in that position the poor man had been killed by a cannon ball, which had carried a wav the whole of his head and face, except the lower jaw. The body and arms had been seized as the time of death by a stiffness which produced the persistence of the state in which they were when the head was cut off. Twenty-four hours had elapsed sine* the battle.