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RIGOR MORTIS. 589
fermentative rigor, because it seems to depend in part on the action of
an enzyme. A muscle may also become stiff or other reasons. The
muscles may become momentarily stiff by warming, in the case of frogs
to 40°, in mammalia to 48-50°, and in birds to 53° C. Distilled water
may also produce a rigor in the muscles (water-rigor). Acids, even very
weak ones, such as carbon dioxide, may quickly produce a rigor (acid-
rigor), or hasten its appearance. A number of chemically different
substances, such as chloroform, ether, alcohol, ethereal oils, caffeine,
and many alkaloids, produce a similar effect.
When the muscle passes into rigor mortis it becomes shorter and
thicker, harder and non-transparent, and less ductile. The acid part
of the amphoteric reaction becomes stronger, which is explained by most
investigators by the assumption of a formation of lactic acid. There is
hardly any doubt that this increase in acidity may at least in part be
due to a transformation of a part of the diphosphate into monophosphate
by the lactic acid. The statements as to whether in the rigor mortis
muscles, besides acid phosphate also free lactic acid exists or not are
rather contradictory; 1
that an acid formation precedes the rigor is gen-
erally admitted and this acid formation is now accepted as being in close
relation to the rigor. While we used to consider the appearance of a clot
consisting of myosin (Kuhne) or cf myogen- and myosin fibrin (v. Furth)
as the essential moment for the rigor, we now admit, based upon the
investigations of Meigs, v. Furth and Lenk,2
that the most essential
factor is the imbibition of the disdiaclasts, which become broader or
shorter, by their taking up of water from the sarcolemma fluid and this
action produced by the acid formation. This view stands in accord with
the experience on. the imbibition of colloids and muscles in water or calt
solutions, in the presence and absence of acid, as well as the fact that the
rigor can be retarded by the artificial circulation of blood or by the action
of salt solutions, namely by those which contain small amounts of
NaHCOs. This also agrees well with the old experience, that the muscle
work, which is also connected with a formation of acid, accelerates the
appearance of rigor.
On further post-mortal changes, namely by a further accumulation
of acid, a progressive coagulation of the proteins gradually occurs. In
this coagulation the ability of the colloid systems to imbibe water
1
It is impossible to enter into the details of the disputed theories as to the reac-
tion of the muscles, etc. We shall only refer to the works of Rohmann, Pfluger’s
Arch., 50 and 55, and Heffter, Arch. f. exp. Path. u. Pharm., 31 and 38. These
works contain also the researches of the earlier investigators more or less completely.
2
Meigs, Journ. of Physiol. 39 and especially, Amer. Journ. of Physiol., 24 and
26; v. Furth and Lenk, Bioch. Zeitschr., 33, and Wien. klin. Wochenschr., 24 (1911).
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