0577 Page – Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Appeals Records, 1913, 1914

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or ten days, a gallon of the liquids of the body having been taken out and a gallon of embalming fluid put in it, and if I further found the acidity of the stomach to be 34 degrees and practically no pepsin, and practically nothing in the lower intestine, the body having been embalmed with formaldehyde, it would be impossible for me or any other chemist or physician to tell anything about the time it had been in the stomach. The acidity of the stomach does not suffice to show it, because it may have been higher than that. There may have been considerable free hydrochloric acid, and that may have disappeared after the body had been embalmed, or even before that, some of it will combine with the walls of the body and some passes out. Not finding anything in the lower intestine would be of no value at all, because the ferments would be destroyed entirely.

CROSS EXAMINATION. If I took the contents of an absolutely normal stomach and made a positive test and found starch there, and there was nothing to indicate anything was stopped up, and the intestines six feet below, were absolutely clear, and nothing has moved out of the stomach, that would show me nothing as to how far digestion had passed, for starch is found in the stomach from the beginning of digestion until the last particle of bread has passed out of the stomach and that may be three or four hours. Medical men are able to compile tables showing how long it takes to digest cabbage and other things by testing for protein, but not for starch, because proteins are the only substances which combine with the hydrochloric acid and which are digested in the stomach, and that can be done only within certain limits and not with mathematical certainty. If the starch digestion is not interrupted, maltose would be found in the stomach, but if I made a test and found starch, but no maltose, I could express no opinion unless the food had been well masticated, and unless I knew how soon after the food entered the stomach that free hydrochloric acid appeared, because free hydrochloric acid stops the starch digestion. Finding starch and