The phenomenon of corpses heated up mysteriously

The body of a patient heated to 40 degrees C after death is a mysterious phenomenon that confuses the scientific world.

In the morning in a hospital in the Czech Republic, a 69-year-old man died of heart disease. An hour later, when the nurse was preparing to take the body to the lab for an autopsy, they found the skin of an unusually warm corpse, according to Popular Science. After 1.5 hours, the body's temperature was 40 degrees Celsius, 5 degrees higher than the temperature before dying. Meanwhile, the hospital room temperature was maintained at 20 degrees C.

Due to fear of the body being able to ignite itself, doctors and nurses cool their bodies by applying ice. Eventually the body was cold like a normal corpse. The study of this patient case was published in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology in March 2017. The results showed that the mysteriously heated corpses had no relation to the phenomenon of self-igniting .

Some corpses heat up very strange.(Artwork: Katarzyna Bialasiewicz).

"Higher body temperature after death is a phenomenon previously recorded, but it is not well understood and obscure , " Victor Weedn, a forensic pathologist at George Washington University, USA , said.

In living organisms, cells produce heat when they break down food. This causes our temperature to remain at 37 degrees C. After a person dies, the cells no longer have food and oxygen to digest, so they stop producing heat, the body cools down after a few hours.

Investigators often use the victim's body temperature to estimate the time of death. This is a very important clue that helps find the culprit. However, the relationship between body temperature and time can be quite complex in some specific cases.

The cause of the unnatural heating up of the dead so far has not been clarified. This phenomenon is difficult to study because they are quite rare and unpredictable. In addition, not everyone who dies in a hospital bed is monitored carefully.