(4) The lungs may have been inflated
artificially. Few of these objections apply, however, when the
hydrostatic test, modified by pressure, is employed. To take these
objections in detail, it may be stated: (1) If the lungs sink from
disease, the question of live birth is answered. (2) This objection is
too refined for practical use. The lungs sink, there is an absence of
any of the signs of suffocation, and the matter ends. The examiner has
only to describe the conditions which he finds, and is not required to
indulge in conjectures as to the amount of respiration which may or may
not have taken place. (3) Gas due to putrefaction collects under the
pleural membrane, and can be expelled by pressure, and is not found in
the air cells. The lungs decompose late, hence in a fresh body
putrefaction of the lungs is absent; in a putrefied child, if the lungs
sink, it must have been stillborn. The so-called _emphysema pulmonum
neonatorum_ is simply incipient putrefaction.
The lung test simply shows that the child has breathed, but affords no
proof that the child has been born alive. The child may have breathed as
soon as its head protruded, the rest of the body being in the maternal
passages.
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