Anomalies in the color of organs are either essentially conjoined with or independent of change of texture. Our concern here is principally with the latter kind. We shall content ourselves with a simple allusion to the former, as the true pathological production of pigment will be separately discussed in the sequel.

The said anomalies consist in diminution, in augmented depth, or in altered quality, alienation, of color. They affect the totality, or simply the majority of textures and organs, or, again, individual organs only, or mere circumscribed portions of these latter. Their causes, it will immediately appear, are numerous.

Diminished coloration is sometimes primitive; various organs, owing to an arrest of development, not acquiring their natural amount of color, a condition very commonly associated with the defective development of the organs in respect both of texture and of bulk, as in the instance of muscles. We may specify a well-known species of this anomaly, namely albinoism (leuksethiopia, leukopathia), wherein the pigment is wanting in the rete mucosum of Malpighi, in the hair, in the iris, and in the choroid membrane of the eye.

It is, however, more frequent as an acquired morbid condition - in a word, as decoloration, blanching. Under this head are to be reckoned, firstly, the pallor of texture consequent upon anaemia, or upon changes suffered in various dyscrases, as chlorosis, albuminosis, dropsy, tabescent diseases, by those carriers of coloring matter, the blood-corpuscles; secondly, the blanching of textures produced by their maceration in the serum of dropsy, by atrophy, by fatty degeneration, the muscles being here the organs principally affected; lastly, that for the most part local, gradual, or rapid decoloration, due, in the former case, to cessation of the development of pigment, in the latter to rapid withdrawal, or more probably to destruction, by some unknown means, of the existing pigment. As an example we may cite the topical blanching of the common integuments in colored tribes, in parts rich in pigment (the scrotum) in whites, the progressive or sudden hoariness of the hair, etc.

Augmented or deepened coloration is, in certain colored textures, in the animal muscles, for instance, the consequence of and the attendant upon hypertrophy. In the outer integuments, it is conditional upon the excessive development of pigment in the rete mucosum; in scars, as a purple tint, caused by the capillary vessels appearing through the texture of the cicatrix, in the embryonic stage, with its thin layer of epidermis. It is usually a consequence:

(a.) Of hyperemia (congestion) and stasis, more especially where the blood is dark-colored, as in cyanosis, in asphyxia, in a typhous crasis, in an inspissated condition of the blood, consequent upon loss of serum, etc.

(b.) Secondly, of hemorrhage, extravasation of substantive blood into textures (apoplexy); sugillation or suffusion founded in rupture, which latter may be the consequence either of traumatic influences, such as contusion and concussion, or of excessive hyperaemia, mechanically produced; of blood stasis: of disease of bloodvessels; or else the consequence of the patency of bloodvessels, engendered by the liquefaction, the breaking down of textures.

(c.) Finally, of the exudation of blood-serum, with an appendage, so to speak, of blood-pigment - to which category belong ecchymosis, petechia in decomposition of the blood, in scurvy, in putrid typhus, in acute exanthematous decomposition, in acute alcohol dyscrasis (the scurvy of drunkards), etc. As subordinate to this we may also mention those outward signs of death which assume essentially the guise of red coloring, namely, death patches, death livor, spurious sugillations. Their character varies:

1. They Are Dependent Upon Local Hyperemia

They Are Dependent Upon Local Hyperemia and stasis, brought about during the death-struggle and the period immediately following death, as the consequence of unequable palsy of the small and capillary vessels, - whence it arises that the blood accumulates in distinct patches of the capillary system various in extent, whilst in others, owing to the continued contractility of those vessels, it is urged onward into the veins. Hence they consist in injection, and, where the usual accompaniment of the livor, from imbibition, is wanting, they are for the most part marked by being sharply bounded by a blanched texture. They are particularly frequent in the mucous membrane of the intestinal tract, and in the lungs.

2. Other Death-Patches

Other Death-Patches originate after death, being the result of cadaverous hyperemia or hypostasis, which signifies the descent of the blood within the vessels, conformably with the laws of gravitation, to the most dependent parts. These patches are mostly of great extent, deeply saturated at their most dependent parts, and less and less so higher up. Their seat, answering to the usually supine position of the dead body, is the occiput, the posterior part of the trunk and limbs; and it includes, not alone the common integuments, hut also the subcutaneous soft parts, and even the posterior portions of the viscera contained in the great cavities. Under different circumstances, they affect other regions of the body; in a lateral position of the corpse, the nether lateral half of the organs - for example, in hemi-lateral hyperemia, the one hemisphere of the brain; in the prone position they appear in the front; in those hung by the neck, at the lower half of the subject and internally, in the organs of the pelvis and hypogastrium.

They are the more developed the greater the amount of blood and the smaller the degree of coagulation which the previous illness and the mode of death have produced in the blood during the mortal struggle. Accordingly, after acute or chronic decomposition of the fibrine in the blood, after asphyxia, they are especially marked by their rapid development after death, by their extent, and by their depth of color.