ABSTRACT

If the victim dies very quickly, no abnormalities will be evident at autopsy. However, if a few hours pass before death occurs, inspection of the upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract will show that the oesophagus has become red and inflamed. In some instances, the inflammation can be so intense that the bowel is said to have a ‘red velvet’ appearance. The only other reliable post-mortem change produced by arsenic poisoning is bleeding from the muscle that lines the inner surface of the left side of the heart (an area known as the left ventricular subendocardium). Unfortunately, this is a relatively non-specific abnormality seen in conditions where the blood pressure suddenly collapses; the cardiac changes can be especially prominent when there has been massive blood loss from arsenic-induced bloody diarrhoea.