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Hu
Bing-Jie
THE CASE
OF
A
MYSTERIOUS
"FRAGRANT CORPSE''
According
to a
newspaper
re-
lease, the heart of a Mrs Zhou stopped
beating
for
1
0
hours
and
yet
the
body
was
still
warm and
all
the muscles
re-
tained
their
elasticity.
As
by
the
next
day
the body still retained elasticity, the
family
decided
to
keep
the
body
in
the
house.
After 3
years'of
exposure to
extremes of temperature and humidity,
the body had not rotten away and even
gave a strange
fragrance.
The slow
loss of body warmth was probably due
to
the high
room
temperature,
her
obes-
ity
and adequate
clothing.
Rigor mortis
or
hardening of
the corpse
usually be-
gins 1-2 hours after death and would
persist for 24 hours, and
by
3-4 days'
time
it
would
disappear.
ln Mrs Zhou's
case, the rigor mortis was
probably
never
noticed.
Decomposition of the
body depends on the elfternal environ-
ment
-
low humidity and temperature
of
the
room would help
to
"preserve"
the body
longer.
Most probably the so-
called "fragrance" was actually the
smell of chemical gases produced
by
slow decomposition of body tissues.
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