Intestate succession

“ If the intestate be a married man living, and having lived with his wife daring marriage, or if the intestate be a married woman living or having lived with her husband during marriage, and shall die without lawful descendants, born or to be born of such marriage, or a prior marriage, the inheritance shall descend to the surviving husband or wife, as the case may be, during his or her natural life, whether the inheritance came to the intestate on the part of the mother or father or otherwise. ”

“ The statutes of each state of the American union must be consulted, as no general rules can be laid down. As to the right to the intestate’s interest in community property in the states where the law of “community”—of “acquets and gains”—prevails, see Inheritance.
INTESTINAL OBSTRUCTION (Ilius) , in surgery, a condition in which the onward passage of the faeces is prevented. It is often associated with phenomena due to strangulation of the gut, leading to gangrene, and with systemic poisoning due to the absorption of toxins, resulting from the decomposition of the retained faeces. ”

“ The inference which the contestants would have the Court draw from the facts is that the decedent intended to die intestate, so that her property would go to her children equally, and that her objection to making a will that night indicated her desire to die intestate, for she knew that her end was near and believed that if the making of the will were put off until the next day she would be dead and dead intestate. ”

“ Men who did not make a will risked the danger of an intestate and unconfessed death. The personal property of a man dying intestate now went to the church as a trust for the dead man's imperiled soul instead of to the man's lord. ”

“ Where two or more strangers were instituted testamentarily, whether to equal or unequal shares, if one of them failed either by predecease or declinature his share accrued ipso jure to the others; for it was a rule that early became proverbial that a man could not die partly testate and partly intestate. There was the same accrual among agnates on intestacy; and both they and stranger testamentary institutes had the same action for division of the inheritance that was made use of by sui heredes. ”

“ The incision, about an inch in length, was closed with a single stitch of silk thread, and after thorough cleansing the whole mass was returned to the abdominal cavity. In this hernial protrusion were recognized four or five feet of the ileum, the cecum with its appendix, part of the ascending colon with corresponding portions of the mesentery; the distribution of the superior mesentery, made more apparent by its living pulsation, was more beautifully displayed in its succession of arches than in any dissection that Doughty had ever witnessed. ”

“ If he dies intestate, I suppose you will inherit everything?"
"I suppose so; but I strongly suspect he will not leave me a sou. I am not pliant enough; and that unfortunate daughter of his may have left children to inherit, after all. ”

“ The most common displacement, or the most common way for the womb to tip, is backwards and at the same time it usually falls downward. You remember, the rectum is directly back of the womb, so, if the womb is tipped backwards, it presses against the rectum. This tends to prevent the feces, or bowel movement, from passing out naturally and helps to produce constipation. ”

“ In wounds of any part of the intestine, whether of X, the caecum, W, the sigmoid flexure of the colon, or Z, the small bowel, if sufficient time be allowed for Nature to establish the adhesive inflammation, she does so, and thus fortifies the peritoneal sac against an escape of the intestinal matter into it by soldering the orifice of the wounded intestine to the external opening. In this mode is formed the artificial anus. The surgeon on principle aids Nature in attaining this result. ”

“ Without committing ourselves to a belief in the entire uselessness of the vermiform appendix, which grows out as a blind alley at the junction of the small intestine with the large, we are safe in saying that it is a dwindling structure--the remains of a blind gut which must have been capacious and useful in ancestral forms. ”

“ Different from the course of development followed in the human embryo is the situation of the ileo-colic junction. The same appears in the terminal straight segment of the canal—corresponding to the human descending colon—while in the human embryo the differentiation of small and large intestine takes place in the course of the ascending limb of the loop. This condition depends upon the relatively much shorter extent of the teleost endgut compared with the human large intestine. Other examples are afforded by the alimentary tract of some of the Amphibia and Reptilia. ”

“ If the rectum is full of hardened feces the womb will be pushed out of place, and if under these circumstances straining is necessary to empty the bowel, and if this condition is habitual, constipation may be the actual cause of displacement of the womb.
Dress and Menstruation.—It is also an opportune time to demonstrate to what extent serious results may follow mistakes in dressing. The habit of permitting growing girls to constrict the waist, to bind and pull the abdomen by too tight garters, or too tight corset, is wrong, and no mother should permit it. ”

“ Man, in common with the four anthropoid apes, has a little thin tube attached to the cæcum known as the appendix vermiformis. In the early embryo it is equal in calibre to the other bowels, but ceases to grow proportionately after a certain time. In the new-born child it is almost as large as in the adult. As this tube proved disadvantageous to man’s precursor (as it does to certain mammals) from catching foreign bodies which form the nucleus of enteroliths or bowel stones, it has lost the nutritive supply of the other intestines and is tending to disappear. It is often absent in man. ”

“ As I did not know the man when he was alive, and had him two days after his decease, I cannot give an immediate account of the cause of his death. But in opening his abdomen, I found the epiploon adhering close to the intestines, in such a manner, that I could not part it without tearing it. It felt rough and dry. And as I was going to remove the intestines, to examine the mesentery, I found them so coherent one with the other, that it was impossible for me to divide them without laceration. Then I inflated the intestinal tube, for the inspection of this extraordinary phænomenon ”

“ The third variety of bonorum possessio was that granted ab intestato. The rules of the jus civile in reference to succession on Ab intestato. intestacy were, as we have seen, extremely strict and artificial. They admitted neither emancipated children nor agnates who had undergone capitis deminutio; they admitted no female agnate more remote than a sister; if the nearest agnate or agnates declined, the right did not pass to those of the next degree; mere cognates, kinsmen of the deceased who were not agnates, e.g. ”

“ That some acquired pathological condition, however, as stomach trouble, or heart {123} trouble, or affection of the liver or of the brain, should be directly transmitted, is quite as nonsensical as that the loss of an arm should be a subject for hereditary transmission. On investigation it will be found that the pathological conditions of immediate ancestors are themselves only a manifestation of family traits that have existed for many generations. The possibility of inheritance must therefore always be borne in mind. ”

“ When a portion of small intestine has been lost by mortification or otherwise, and the patient has recovered with an unnaturally situated or artificial anus, the intestine, although at first in contact with the wall of the abdomen, is gradually, in many cases though not in all, retracted into the cavity—it has been supposed by the dragging of the mesentery upon it at the point of union of the divided extremities outside where the eperon or valve is formed ”

“ The peristaltic motion of the intestine goes on, and the consequence is, that the constricted portion is received into that which is widened, the anterior portion is invaginated in the posterior: obstruction of the intestinal passage is the necessary consequence, and the animal dies, either from the general disturbance of the system which ensues, or the inflammation which is set up in the invaginated part. ”

“ The woman recovered, but died five months later from a second attack of intussusception, the ileum rupturing and peritonitis ensuing. There is a record in this country of a woman of forty-five who discharged 44 inches of intestine, and who survived for forty-two days. The autopsy showed the sigmoid flexure gone, and from the caput ceci to the termination the colon only measured 14 inches. Vater gives a history of a penetrating abdominal wound in which a portion of the colon hung from the wound during fourteen years, forming an artificial anus. ”

“ In order to come into the possession of a large inheritance the murderess poisoned the boy by introducing the ends of some phosphorous matches into his rectum, causing death that night; there was intense inflammation of the rectum. The woman was speedily apprehended, and committed suicide when her crime was known.
Complete transfixion of the abdomen does not always have a fatal issue. In fact, two older writers, Wisemann and Muys, testify that it is quite possible for a person to be transfixed without having any portion of the intestines or viscera wounded. ”

“ The small intestines make two principal convolutions, and are kept in their place by a well-developed mesentery. I could detect no trace of a pancreas. As the intestine approaches the rectum, it becomes excessively narrow, and at last ends almost by intussusception (Fig. 5) ; the wide and capacious rectum ends in the cloaca. Before examining the internal structure of these parts, it may be well to compare them with similar organs occurring in the salamanders. For this purpose I have selected Triton cristatus and Salamander maculosa. ”

“ Now it is impossible to speak of both organs at once, so we shall deal with each in turn, beginning with the one which is capable of demonstrating the retentive faculty most plainly. For the stomach retains the food until it has quite digested it, and the uterus retains the embryo until it brings it to completion, but the time taken for the completion of the embryo is many times more than that for the digestion of food. ”

“ It inhabits the upper portion of the small intestine, but neither it nor the ova appear in the stool unless an active diarrhea exists. Ordinarily the eggs hatch in the intestine, and when infection is severe, embryos can be found in the feces in large numbers. ”

“ Holes in adherent small intestine may sometimes be sutured, but if the gut has been extensively involved it may be necessary, and often judicious, to resect a few centimetres and join the cut ends by a circular enterorrhaphy. ”

“ In thin persons large enteroliths and foreign bodies may be palpable. The symptoms are those similar to obstruction by a large gall-stone.
Acute Intussusception forms about 30% of all cases of intestinal obstruction, and is the most common variety found in children. More than 50% of the cases are found during the first ten years of life, and half that amount in babies under one year; the large preponderance is in males. By intussusception is meant an invagination or protrusion of a part of the intestine in the lumen of the intestine immediately below it ”

“ If the stone happily finds its way into the intestine the distress suddenly ceases. In the meanwhile relief may be afforded by fomentations, and by morphia or chloroform, but if no prospect of the stone escaping into the intestine appears likely, the surgeon will be called upon to remove it by an incision through the gall-bladder, or the bile-duct, or through the intestine at the spot where it is trying to make its escape. Sometimes a gall-stone which has found its way into the intestine is large enough to block the bowel and give rise to intestinal obstruction which demands abdominal section. ”

“ Although the bowels do not become affected as early as several other parts, they will almost certainly become involved should the patient's life be prolonged; and in those cases where death is a direct result of the degeneration the intestines share with the kidneys the chief responsibility. It is not, however, until an advanced stage of lardaceous degeneration that its presence in the alimentary canal is revealed by symptoms; indeed, many cases do not, throughout life, betray evidences of the pronounced alterations that are to be discovered after death. ”

“ Figure 6A represents a reconstruction, from a series of transverse sections, of the enteron of an embryo of about the age of the one shown in figure 6. The outlines of the entire embryo, of the eye, e, and of the anterior, aa, and posterior, pa, appendages are shown by broken lines. Its position being coincident with that of the stomach, liver, and pancreas, the anterior appendage can scarcely be seen. The enteron, including one lung only, for the sake of simplicity, is shaded solid black, while the liver and pancreas, with their ducts, are outlines with unbroken lines. ”

“ This coincidence, while it would afford a handle to the deniers of the stated facts, in the assumption that the emergence of the living young from the abdomen, or their presence within it, has given rise to the notion—may have an essential significance and connexion with the phenomenon itself, on the hypothesis of its truth. [Pg 226] That endowment, whatever it be, which enables the young to live and breathe in the abdominal cavity of the mother before birth, may render it easier for them than for others not so endowed to survive a temporary incarceration within the stomach after birth. ”

“ The neighbouring parts are involved in cartilaginous induration; the surface of the bowel is lobulated and ulcerated, its cavity is contracted, and the discharge is profuse, sanious, bloody, and putrid; there is frequent desire to void the contents of the gut, but in general nothing but flatus and puriform fluid is evacuated; when feces do pass, dreadful pain is excited, and continues for some time. The difficulty of voiding feculent matter becomes greater and greater, frequent attacks of ileus occur, and in one of them the patient expires. ”