One method of determining the time of death is to measure the rate at which the deceased's body temperature drops. Typically, at an ambient temperature of +20°C, the body of an adult usually cools down by 1°C in one hour. A forensic expert, pathologist, candidate of medical sciences, senior researcher at the group of pathology of terminal conditions at the Research Institute of Human Morphology named after A. acad. A.P. Avtsyn Russian Scientific Center for Chemistry named after. acad. B.V. Petrovsky Boris Kulbitsky.
“Forensic medicine uses a combination of methods to determine the time of death. One such method is to measure the cooling rate of the body. Before measuring body temperature, note the temperature of the air or water where the corpse was located. Then the body temperature is measured in the rectum, after an hour the procedure is repeated and the indicators are correlated,” said the doctor.
According to him, at an ambient temperature of +20°C, the body of an adult usually cools down by 1°C in one hour.
“Moreover, in the first hours it is a little faster, and after six hours the drop in body temperature slows down, and it will decrease by 1°C in 1.5-2 hours. In arid (dry) and arctic climates, processes proceed differently and the value of thermometry drops,” concluded the forensic expert.
Read more about how the time of death is determined by the eyes, how quickly the process of decay begins, what fat wax is and when it forms on a corpse – in Kulbitsky’s interview with Gazeta.Ru.
