Postmortem Changes in Soft Tissues

The processes that reduce a human body to a skeleton through the postmortem destruction of soft tissues are complex. As with other biologic phenomena, there will be much variation from person to person and it is impossible to assign absolute times for any of the processes. The following discussion of decomposition is limited to bodies which have not been embalmed, since this process retards and, in some cases, completely prevents decomposition.

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