Chapter 68: Blue-Black Lymph Nodes

Jiang Yuan didn't go to dissect the corpse immediately.

Now, the first thing to do was to judge the time of death.

What the public was most familiar with was corpse temperature, but that was for corpses that had just died. And when the corpse was at the scene, a thermometer had already been inserted into the anus, but it was useless anyway.

Besides corpse temperature, other judgment standards, speaking of it, were all statistical summaries.

For example, the corpse in front of him, the skin was already swollen and wrinkled, and at the same time, the rigor mortis had eased. Looking at the process of moving, the skin in many places had already peeled off. Jiang Yuan roughly judged: "The recent water temperature is about 20 degrees, the time of death should be within 2 to 5 days?"

Judging the time of death of a corpse, especially the accurate time of death, was a very difficult thing, and it could even be said to be the item with the highest possibility of error in forensic work.

Many forensic doctors in TV shows or movies who could give the time of death by the hour just by taking a look were either strong to the sky, or could only be explained by the plot.

Real forensic doctors, when facing a corpse within 12 hours, or at most 24 hours, could still give a relatively accurate time of death, such as 4 to 8, or 6 to 12 hours, while corpses that had been dead for more than a day, if they wanted to judge the time accurately, needed many favorable conditions. And judging wrongly wasn't a fresh thing.

An extreme example was Professor Bass of the University of Kansas in 1977, who identified a corpse with a gunshot wound to the head. Because the muscles were well preserved and had a healthy pink color, Bass concluded that the time of death was within one year, but in fact, the corpse belonged to Colonel William Shy of the Army, who died in the Civil War and was preserved in a sealed lead coffin, so it was a corpse from 1864, which was 113 years away from the time of death estimated by Professor Bass.

Bass therefore created the famous "Body Farm," but it was still impossible to completely solve the problem of time of death.

Many forensic doctors would make mistakes in the time of death, and the judgment of the time of death was very influential to the progress of the investigation.

Jiang Yuan gave a time of 2 to 5 days, which Wu Jun thought was quite fair.

Recording the answer certified by Wu Jun in his notebook, Jiang Yuan stood up straight and examined the corpse on the autopsy table.

For a normal autopsy, Jiang Yuan had also done it several times, and basically, every time it was opening the three cavities.

And after the three cavities were opened, usually, the cause of death should be found.

Occasionally, one would hear about negative situations, which were corpses where the cause of death couldn't be found in the common sense, and then checking the limbs and other positions would often have the answer.

However, the half-corpse Jiang Yuan was facing today didn't leave any of the three cavities. In other words, the places that should be done in a normal autopsy weren't left by this corpse.

Honestly speaking, Wu Jun handing the knife to Jiang Yuan was also a bit at a loss.

In his view, there wasn't much left to be particular about in the autopsy of this kind of corpse.

"I'll start dissecting from the pelvic cavity." Jiang Yuan said softly after straightening the corpse.

Wu Jun gave an "En."

In the pelvic cavity of a normal male corpse, there were the bladder, testicles, prostate, as well as vas deferens, urethra, etc. However, in today's corpse, the area between the two legs was already a mess, not only swollen and rotten, but likely bitten by fish in the river, or dragged out along with the organs in the abdominal cavity. In short, the organs in the common sense weren't preserved.

Jiang Yuan still followed the normal process, separating the soft tissue outside the peritoneum behind the pubic bone, then cutting open the peritoneum to observe the situation in the pelvic cavity.

Nothing was found.

Jiang Yuan didn't make a sound, and just continued to follow the process of local dissection all the way down.

Doing a forensic autopsy was sometimes like solving a problem. The solver wanted a result, but the train of thought for solving the problem wasn't there from the beginning.

At this time, you could only list all the conditions, and then think according to the conditions.

This was also a big difference between forensic doctors and doctors.

Doctors usually made plans before surgery, and there was no such thing as opening the abdominal cavity and thinking while looking.

But forensic doctors didn't have as many examination conditions as doctors, and the plans forensic doctors usually adopted were the simplest and most direct ones—turning them out to look.

Only when they saw clues could they follow the clues to further draw conclusions.

Jiang Yuan and Wu Jun cooperated busily, staring at the autopsy table without blinking.

What they expected was to be able to see some characteristics, such as surgical marks, for example, having had bladder surgery, or having had varicose vein surgery, which could further narrow the scope.

Or, the victim had sports injuries, such as scars on the ankles, which were also good entry points.

Of course, it would be best to have a prosthetic limb, such as an artificial foot, with a serial number, contact the relevant company, and immediately get information such as name and age.

"The color here is wrong, right." Jiang Yuan suddenly stopped the knife and put it aside.

Wu Jun was a bit old and dim-sighted, so he frowned and looked over.

"Here... the lymph nodes have turned black." Jiang Yuan flipped the skin of the corpse, then pushed aside the muscles that interfered with the judgment, exposing the lymphatic vessels at the thigh.

The lymph, which should have been white or milky yellow, now turned blue-black.

Wu Jun leaned in to look and couldn't help but nod: "It has indeed turned black, take a sample."

"Good." Jiang Yuan cut a little into the inspection bag, then flipped the skin outside, saying: "It shouldn't be cancer; there's no obvious swelling, and no characteristics of cancer cells."

"En, for a young man in his twenties, the risk of cancer is lower." Wu Jun pressed the lymph position twice, frowned and said: "It really doesn't look like a lesion..."

Jiang Yuan said: "Could it be a tattoo?"

"A tattoo?" Wu Jun's brain turned a bit slowly, but reminded by Jiang Yuan, he couldn't help but nod: "When tattooing, it pierced the dermis, it's possible... but there's no tattoo outside."

"The tattoo was washed off, but the color of the lymph is still there." Jiang Yuan pulled some of the deceased's skin over and said: "Look carefully, you can actually see some traces; it's been soaked too badly by the water."

Wu Jun listened and nodded slowly; for forensic doctors, a tattoo itself was a very good characteristic point. The legendary US Marines all had tattoos, wasn't it just to make it easy for forensic doctors to identify corpses...

However, Wu Jun wasn't very familiar with washing tattoos, so he asked: "Can it be washed so clean now?"

"Laser tattoo removal, there's a certain probability." Jiang Yuan pointed to the leg of the corpse again and said: "The area of his tattoo isn't large. Looking at it now, you can see a little trace. It was washed relatively clean, and there are no scars. It should have been washed in a hospital. This might have records."

"Your train of thought is good. I'll call Captain Huang. There shouldn't be many people who use lasers to wash tattoos in hospitals, and just happened to wash the tattoo on the thigh." Wu Jun said and took off his gloves, washed them a little, and started to make a call.

The call was connected, and Wu Jun only heard him shouting to the other end of the phone: "... just at the position of the Wind Market acupoint, which is the position of the thigh touched by your fingertips when your hands hang down naturally, and a little bit towards the leg surface, a tattoo the size of three coins, preliminary estimate." ===== CHAPTER 69 =====