Algor mortis (Latin: algor—coolness; mortis—death) is the reduction in body temperature following death. This is generally a steady decline until matching ambient temperature, although external factors can have a significant influence. Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Death is either the cessation of life in a living organism or the state of the organism after that event. ...
A measured rectal temperature can give some indication of the time of death. The Glaister equation, for example, is (98.4° F − rectal temperature)/1.5, giving hours elapsed since death. Fahrenheit is a temperature scale named after the German physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736), who proposed it in 1724. ...
The signs of death are usually noted as algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis, and decomposition. As decomposition occurs the internal body temperature tends to rise again. Rigor mortis is a recognizable sign of death that is caused by a chemical change in the muscles, causing the limbs of the corpse to become stiff (rigor) and impossible to move or manipulate. ... Livor mortis or postmortem lividity one of the signs of death, is a settling of the blood in the lower (dependent) portion of the body, causing a purplish red discoloration of the skin: when the heart is no longer agitating the blood, heavy red blood cells sink through the serum... Rotting fruit Decomposition is the reduction of bodies and other formerly living organisms into simpler forms of matter and, most particularly, to the fate of the human body after death. ... Rotting fruit Decomposition is the reduction of bodies and other formerly living organisms into simpler forms of matter and, most particularly, to the fate of the human body after death. ...
The result, in 1811, was the first scientific description of rigor mortis and "Nysten's law," which states: "The progress of cadaveric rigidity is descending." That is to say, it begins with the muscles of the face, then progresses to the neck, trunk, arms, and finally the lower limbs.
With this instrument, pathologists had been given the means to add hatch marks to the temperature standards of death known to the ancient Egyptians and Chinese.
Together, the triple stopwatches of rigor, livor, and algor gave nineteenth-century pathologists the confidence to estimate time of death over the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours, up to the point where lividity became fixed, bodies reached room temperature, and rigor melted away.
Somatic death is followed by a number of irreversible changes that are of legal importance, especially in estimating the time of death.
These include rigor mortis, livor mortis (discoloration of the body due to settling of blood), algormortis (cooling of the body), autolysis (breakdown of tissue by enzymes liberated by that tissue after death), and putrefaction (invasion of the body by organisms from the gastrointestinal tract).
Brain death, which is now a legal condition in most states for declared death, requires that the following be absent for at least 12 hours: behavioral or reflex motor functions above the neck, including pupillary reflexes to testing jaw reflex, gag reflex, response to noxious stimuli, and any spontaneous respiratory movement.
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