Casper's Dictum - The County Medical Examiners

Banished from the medical community

One brilliant German forensic pathologist

Johann Casper, his nascent methods on

The rate of rot made him a cunning medico-criminalist

The heady chemical stench of decay set him free

To discover putrefaction patterns others failed to see

Internal and external bacteria coalesced

And illustrated their wisdom in a semi-liquid mess

Professor of Forensic Pathology

Disgraced by Berlin doctors

Misunderstood forensic genius

Nineteenth century medicine

Rejected forensics and outlawed him

Amongst reeking gassy corpses

Casper hatched his dark science

Medical examiners now unite

Bring Casper’s Dictum to scientific light

«A week in air-two weeks in water

Two weeks in water-eight weeks in ground!»

Ballooning stiffs and liquescent corpses

Bursting models for Casper’s Dictum

Streptococci and Clostridium Welchii

Battle for postmortem bacterial supremacy

Autolytic conversion hosts and breeds

While putrefactive ooze squirts from the seams

Casper draped in a rotten viscera

Popping bleb and bullae sebum

Navigating the semi-fluid black mess

Charting decay for his seminal dictum

He noticed that corpses found submerged

Decay half as fast as those uninterred

Exhumed carcasses revealed to him

Four times less rot than those in the swim

He penned a text in 1850

Called Forensic Dissection (naturally)

His dictum was touted a medicolegal success

Even Rudolf Virchow was begrudgingly impressed

«A week in air-two weeks in water

Two weeks in water-eight weeks in ground!»

Ballooning stiffs and liquescent corpses

Bursting models for Casper’s Dictum

Sulphemethaemoglobin stains, putridity marbles

Blood is haemolysed

The unyielding hot logic of decay persists

Casper is immortalized

Before predation can strip the corpse clean

Casper graces the grisly crime scene

From waterlogged stiffs soughing their flesh

To exhumed partially skeletonized mulch

His ghastly rule of thumb is well known

From recently deceased to sun-bleached bone

Forensics and anatomy are hideously wed

Casper’s science of the dead