Talk:Putrefaction

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Amstutz2.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:31, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Heading/Summary Alteration

I think there is some more information that could possibly be added to the article to strengthen it. The lead section for instance could encompass some more information as it should be a brief summary of the whole article. Below is an altered lead section with some more information that could also be used such as the significance of all the Body farms in the U.S. Also, maybe there can be a brief summary added to each chemical that delays putrefaction. So Small adjustments here and there that I think could help. Let me know what you think of the revised lead section!

Putrefaction is the 5th stage in the process of decomposition following Pallor Mortis, Algor Mortis, Rigor Mortis and Livor Mortis. This process references the break down of the body of a human or animal after death. In broad terms it can be viewed as the breakdown of proteins in the body and the eventual breakdown of the cohesiveness of tissues and the liquidation of organs. This is caused by the decomposition of organic matter by bacterial or fungal digestion, which creates the release of gases that infiltrate the body’s tissues and leads to the deterioration of the of tissues and organs. The approximate time it takes putrefaction to occur is dependent on various factors. There are internal and external factors that affect the rate of putrefaction. Internal factors include the age at which death has occurred, the overall structure and condition of the body, the cause of death and external injuries arising before or after death. External factors include environmental temperature, moisture and air exposure, burial factors, and light exposure. The first signs of putrefaction are signified by a greenish discoloration on the outside of the skin on the abdominal wall corresponding to where the large intestine begins, as well as under the surface of the liver. Certain substances such as, Carbolic Acid, Arsenic, Strychnine, and Zinc Chloride can even be used to delay the process of putrefaction in different ways based on their chemical make up. To understand the process of Decomposition as well us how these substances affect the rate of putrefaction there are facilities known as Body farms where cadavers are put in different environmental conditions to study how the process of decomposition can be affected. There are 6 University Body Farm Research Facilities in the world all located within the United States, which include the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Western Carolina University, Texas State University, Sam Houston State University, Southern Illinois University, and Colorado Mesa University.

Bibliography and Explanation for Possible Adjustments

Rao, D., Dr. (2013). Putrefaction | Forensic Pathology Online. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from http://www.forensicpathologyonline.com/e-book/post-mortem-changes/putrefaction

• This site has very good information on the internal and external processes of conditions affecting the rate of putrefaction. Most of these conditions are explained well in the article, but are not properly cited.

Goff, L. M. (2009). Early post-mortem changes and stages of decomposition in exposed cadavers. Experimental & Applied Acarology, 49(1-2), 21-36. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from http://za2uf4ps7f.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Early post-mortem changes and stages of decomposition in exposed cadavers&rft.jtitle=Experimental & Applied Acarology&rft.au=M Lee Goff&rft.date=2009-10-01&rft.pub=Springer Science & Business Media&rft.issn=0168-8162&rft.eissn=1572-9702&rft.volume=49&rft.issue=1-2&rft.spage=21&rft_id=info:doi/10.1007/s10493-009-9284-9&rft.externalDocID=1812244061¶mdict=en-US

• This article doesn’t specifically talk about putrefaction, but it gives a good overview of other stages of decomposition post mortem. This can be used to make sense of other stages of decomposition and how they tie in together.

Peck, D. L., & Bryant, C. D. (2009). Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc.

• This is a fairly clear overview of putrefaction and sums up the main thoughts and concepts of it. This could be used to further breakdown or help out with relaying how putrefaction works, as it is very well described.

Pope, M. A. (2010). Differential decomposition patterns of human remains in variable environments of the Midwest. University of South Florida: Scholarly Commons. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2740&context=etd

• This article talks about the stages of decomposition in death and will be able to show a timeline an accurate timeline for each and how the process of putrefaction relates to the overall theme of decomposition. The main point of the article explains how the body decomposes in different environments, which can be used to explain the external rate of decomposition.

Stromberg, J. (2015, March 13). The Science of human decay. Vox

• This article talks about the largest body farm in in the world. In the Putrefaction article on Wikipedia, body farms are mentioned slightly and I think it would be a good idea to expand the research section and mention all 6, which are located in the US. Amstutz2 (talk) 04:23, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Minor adjustments

I made several changes to the article that I believe offer significant improvements over the prior version. Particularly to the latter half of the article detailing the decomposition of the human body. To be more specific: Several line breaks were put in place, to space out the chart. I added and adjusted punctuation. Several sentences were, pardon the pun, fleshed out with articles, and other such things, forming longer sentences where there had previously been simple sentence fragments. The following sentences after the chart were expanded on to be more readable, and a sentence was added referencing UoT's Body Farm facility, including a link to the relevant wiki page.

I don't believe my changes are 'up to' wikipedia standards in any way, but I believe them to be a step in the correct direction. Unfortunately, I do not have much knowledge concerning this topic, or wikipedia editing in general, and don't feel confident enough to continue making adjustments here. I hope someone with more knowledge that I will come in and add to this article and make it better. :) ColbyWolf (talk) 09:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

What, no picture of this decomp stage? 142.166.80.4 (talk) 19:03, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Page move

This page was recently moved from Putrefaction to Putrifaction (biochemistry). Putrifaction is an incorrect spelling; I moved it back to Putrefaction. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:25, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I also changed the spelling in the article back to putrefaction. This is supported by Merriam-Webster (cf. [1]) and a Googlefight. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:30, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Decomposition

"Putrefaction is one of seven stages in the decomposition of the body of a dead animal." Decomposition is one of the seven stages in the decomposition of the body of a dead animal. The chart at the right uses "Stages of Death." To most people's minds, by the time decomposition sets in the body has been dead for some time. Is pallor mortis one of the seven stages of decomposition? I'm not sure which came first, or whether this series of articles and this post on tumblr, Art and Reference Point are by the same author, but someone needs to define their terms. Is decomposition the overall process, or one of the stages? James Galloway (talk) 17:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review - Mariah Beebe

Drew,

I was thoroughly impressed with the research you put into your article. I think that you researched this topic very well and broke it down into terms that someone who has no knowledge of the subject could understand. I like how you explained what Putrefaction is from a scientific perspective, but also gave it a simpler definition. I also really enjoyed how detailed you went into the different days and phases of Putrefaction. It made it easier for a reader to understand what this would look like to watch.

If I were to suggest any suggestions to you, I would suggest that you try to find synonyms for some of the larger words you used, such as thermodynamics and hydrolysis. I also would go into greater detail about factors effecting putrefaction. I think that some of the topics could use more research. I think that these edits would be the most important thing you could do to edit your article. The way that you spoke about the content made sense and it was in a very logical placement. Other than that, I was very impressed with your article.

I think that after reading your article there are definite changes I can make to my article. I will change the way it is laid out and I will also add more research to my article. I like the way you had different headings because it made it easier to follow the reading.

Great work Drew,

Mariah Beebe

Timeline

The timeline given from Luff's "Text-book of forensic medicine, and toxicology" is not accurate; the source is from 1895, and from personal anecdote, some organs are very out of order (e.g. the pancreas autolyzes fairly quickly, and the trachea is not the first organ to decompose). Additionally, different tissues in organs will decompose at different rates. The GI tract could be considered high on the list, because the mucosa will be lost fairly early. However, one could also place it much lower on the list, since the muscularis propria will remain for a longer period.

Other types of putrefaction

I came to this article looking for information about putrefaction in the context of food spoilage and found that it focuses almost exclusively on the postmortem breakdown of humans and animals. Would it be appropriate to add a section or hatnote regarding the general breakdown of organic matter? –dlthewave ☎ 17:46, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Image

Is it really necessary to show a photograph of the corpse of a murder victim as an example of putrefaction? Couldn't someone leave a steak behind their shed for a week or something instead? --2601:2C6:47F:985A:AD14:64DA:4727:8153 (talk) 02:53, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Putrefaction is a much more general topic than this article portrays: refactoring the article.

While it is true that this topic is very important process following the death of living things, including animals like humans (and judging from the way the article is right now, that aspect is very interesting or prominent for some people), that is just a small part of what it is.

Putrefaction (at least the simple definition) is a general biochemical process that is done by various microbes that breaks down protein into ammonium and other byproducts which cause a putrid smell. It can happen wherever there are proteins available to those microbes and it certainly is not just a part of animal death as the opening of the article currently suggests.

I copied the intro here. The bold portions are the only parts where it addresses the general topic while the other parts focus specifically on putrefaction as a step in the decay of animals.

Putrefaction is the fifth stage of death, following pallor mortis, livor mortis, algor mortis, and rigor mortis. This process references the breaking down of a body of an animal post-mortem. In broad terms, it can be viewed as the decomposition of proteins, and the eventual breakdown of the cohesiveness between tissues, and the liquefaction of most organs. This is caused by the decomposition of organic matter by bacterial or fungal digestion, which causes the release of gases that infiltrate the body's tissues, and leads to the deterioration of the tissues and organs. The approximate time it takes putrefaction to occur is dependent on various factors. Internal factors that affect the rate of putrefaction include the age at which death has occurred, the overall structure and condition of the body, the cause of death, and external injuries arising before or after death. External factors include environmental temperature, moisture and air exposure, clothing, burial factors, and light exposure. Body farms are facilities that study the way various factors affect the putrefaction process.

The first signs of putrefaction are signified by a greenish discoloration on the outside of the skin, on the abdominal wall corresponding to where the large intestine begins, as well as under the surface of the liver.

Certain substances, such as carbolic acid, arsenic, strychnine, and zinc chloride, can be used to delay the process of putrefaction in various ways based on their chemical make up.

As should be obvious the general process is only mentioned tangentially while the first definition and the majority of the content focuses specifically on animal (or even specifically human) decomposition.

As an example of more balanced coverage of this topic see the Putrefying bacteria page.

I think that this page should have a similar balanced coverage of the topic by

1. giving generally applicable definitions and adequate coverage of the other aspects of the topic and
2. moving the majority of details specific to putrefaction in dead animals and humans to a subsection and/or a separate article.

Of course putrefaction in relation to decomposition of animals including humans should be discussed to some extent, but it should not be the overwhelming focus.

I think that making these changes would make the article more topical relative to its general title, make it more informative and relevant for a broader audience (biochemistry, ecology, physiology etc.), and could also help with people who find the human stuff objectionable by making it easier harder to see on accident while still keeping it available.

Since this is a major change (and potentially involves making a new page) I am just recommend it here so it can eventually be implemented and accepted by the people who are more invested in this page rather than just going rogue and changing everything on my own. Williamspete001 (talk) 23:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)