DR JOHN FUNK, Sworn In For The State, 194th To Testify

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DR. JOHN FUNK, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am professor of pathology and bacteriologist. I was shown by Dr.

Harris sections from the vaginal wall of Mary Phagan, sections taken

near the skin surface. I didn't see sections from the stomach or the contents. These sections showed that the epithelium wall was torn off at

points immediately beneath that covering in the tissues below, and there

was infiltrated pressure of blood. They were, you might say, engorged,

and the white blood cells in those blood vessels were more numerous than

you will find in a normal blood vessel. The blood vessels at some distance

from the torn point were not so engorged to the same extent as those

blood vessels immediately in the vicinity of the hemorrhage. Those

blood vessels were larger than they should be under normal circumstances, as compared with the blood vessels in the vicinity of the tear. You couldn't tell about any discoloration, but there was blood there. It

is reasonable to suppose that there was swelling there because of the infiltrated pressure of the blood in the tissues. Those conditions must have

been produced prior to death, because the blood could not invade the tissues after death. If a young lady, between thirteen and fourteen years

old eats at eleven thirty a. m. a normal meal of bread and cabbage on a

Saturday and at three a. m. Sunday morning she is found with a cord

around her neck, the skin indented, the nails and flesh cyanotic, the tongue

out and swollen, blue nails, everything indicating that she had been

strangled to death, that rigor mortis had set in, and according to the best

authorities had probably progressed from sixteen to twenty hours, and

she was laying face down when found, and gravity had forced the blood

into that part of the body next to the ground, that it had discolored her

features, that immediately thereafter, between ten and two o'clock she

was embalmed with a fluid containing usual amount of formaldehyde,

this being injected into the veins in the large cavities, she is interred

thereafter and in about a week or ten days she is disinterred, and you

find in her stomach cabbage like that (State's Exhibit G) and you find

granules of starch undigested, and those starch granules are developed

by the usual color tests, and you also find in that stomach thirty-two degrees of combined hydrochloric acid, the pyloris closed, and the duodenum, and six feet of the small intestines empty, no free hydrochloric

acid being present at all, nor dextrin, or erythrodextrin being found in

any degree, and the uterus was somewhat enlarged, and the walls of the

vagina show dilation and swelling, I would say that under those conditions

that the epithelium was torn off before death, because of the

changes in the blood vessels and tissues below the epithelium covering,

and because of the presence of blood. I would not express an opinion as

to how long cabbage had been in the stomach, from the appearance of the

cabbage itself, taking into consideration the combined hydrochloric acid

of thirty-two degrees, the emptiness of the small intestine, the presence

of starch granules, and the absence of free hydrochloric acid, one can't

say positively, but it is reasonable to assume that the digestion had progressed probably an hour, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

Dr. Dorsey asked me to examine the sections of the vaginal wall last

Saturday. The sections I examined were about a quarter of an inch wide

and three-quarters of an inch long. It was about nine twenty-five thousandths of an inch thick, that is, much thinner than tissue paper. I examined thirty or forty little strips. That was after this trial began. I

was not present at the autopsy. As soon as a tissue receives an injury,

it reacts in a very short time. The reaction shows up in the changes of

the blood vessels. You can tell by the appearance of the blood vessels

whether the injury was before death or not, and you can give an approximate idea as to the length of time before death. I do not know from what body the sections were taken. I know that it was from a human vagina.

THE STATE CLOSES.

EVIDENCE FOR DEFENDANT IN SUR-REBUTTAL