ABSTRACT
In 1839, a book was published in London by Dr John Davey, titled Researches, Physiological and Anatomical, in which Chapter 13 dealt with ‘Observations on the Temperature of the Human Body after Death’. The great period of electrophysiology during the nineteenth century was accompanied by many studies on the postmortem electrical excitability of skeletal muscle, studies that were performed mainly by physiologists, but also by French and German pathologists. The fact that Rosenthal was working in the 1870s indicates that it was recognized quite early that electrical excitability of skeletal muscles may be suitable method for determining the time since death in the early postmortem interval. Chemical tests for determining the postmortem interval have been largely developed since the 1950s. Among these tests, the most widely used worldwide is the vitreous potassium concentration. In 1964 and 1971, H. J. Mallach published his well-known table on the time course of rigor mortis based on potations in the classical textbooks of forensic medicine.
