What Happens To The Body After Death

     When a body dies, it does so slowly. A shot through the heart immediately stops blood flow, and the brain ceases to function a few minutes later. But cells of muscle, skin, and bone live on--dying only when metabolic waste products build up, sometimes days later.
     Upon death, the body temperature begins to drop at about 2.5 degrees F an hour. The muscles relax, and the skin sags into new shapes. Blood settles in body parts closest to the ground, turning the top grayish white and darkening the underside, except where pressed to the ground. The resulting liver-colored stain, liver mortis, is most pronounced about 10 hours after death.
     Within 6 hours, rigor mortis sets in: The eyelids stiffen, then the neck and jaw, and finally the remaining muscles. (The reason, still poorly understood, is probably a combination of chemical shifts and protein coagulation.) After roughly a day, the muscles slowly relax again in the same sequence that they stiffened.
     Meanwhile, bacteria have eaten through the gut. The first sign is usually a greenish patch marbling blood vessels on the lower right belly. The putrefaction spreads across the stomach, down the thighs, over the chest. The skin changes to olive to eggplant to black. The bacteria produce gas that bulges the eyes, protrudes the tongue, and pushes blood-stained fluid from orifaces. That's why coffins are constructed with lids that can burp.
     A week after death finds the skin loosened and covered with large, putrid blisters. hand skin can slough off like a glove, taking the fingerprints with it.
     A few weeks later, the hair, teeth, and nails begin to loosen, sometimes to fall out. Some of the organs start to liquefy; others, such as the prostate, may remain intact for a year.
     Exposed to the elements in the heat of summer, a body can be reduced to a skeleton in only a month. Burried 6 feet down, even without a coffin, skeletonization normally requires a decade more.