On the Disorganization Procedure for the Identification of Death of Drowing

It is very important in medicolegal practice to determine drowning or dropping into water after death. Drowning is decided by water from the body and diatom in the various organs of the victims. In the ordinary method of the detection of diatoms, disorganization procedure on the sand bath with strong acid and heating is performed. Recently digestion with tissue solubilizer and ultrasonic irradiation at the room temperature has been reported. In this paper the authors report a modified method is combined the above two methods. The results are as follows. 1. Digestion by tissue solubilizer and ultrasonic irradiation. When ultrasonic wave is irradiated to 10 of organs with 40 ml of soluene, digestion of formalin fixed organe is impossible even in the case of homogenized organs. 2. Mixe method of digestion with strong acid on the sand bath and ultrasonic irradiation with solubilizer. Organs with fuming nitric acid are heated for 10 min. and ultrasonic irradiation with soluene is performed at the room temperature. Digestion is possible in shortest time by direct irradiation. In this case the transducer is oxidized by strong acid. 3. Elimination of the acid for protecting the oxidation of the transducer. After digestion on the sand bath, mud substance is washed with distilled water and centrifuged and ultrasonic irradiation with soluene is performed. In this method irradiation time is longer than the procedure 2 but oxidation of the transducer is protected and formalin fixed organs are also digested and volum of soluene is decreased to 1/5-1/10.