The physician in the autopsy of Charles II gave some very... colorful (if not medically impossible) descriptions like "heart the size of a peppercorn" and "did not contain a single drop of blood." What was going on in these autopsies?

I was reading Wikipedia's entry on the death of Charles II, and the autopsy report states that "did not contain a single drop of blood; his heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water."

Some of these are believable (the single black testicle), some I suppose were slightly colorful descriptions (the rotten innards) and some are, as far as I know, anatomically impossible (the heart). So what was going on in Baroque-era autopsies? Were they doubted by other physicians with greater anatomical knowledge?

As a related question, who would do these autopsies, to whom would they be reported, and for what reason were they made?

submitted by /u/Blaskowicz to r/AskHistorians
[link] [comments]

from reddit: the front page of the internet https://ift.tt/2BMSIKb