[Reports on medico-legal data from massive investigation performed by the Medico-Legal Society of Japan--weight and size of internal organs of normal Japanese today].

A statistical study was made on the weight and size of internal organs of normal Japanese. The most of them were judicially autopsied by forensic pathologists all over Japan up to 1989. In these materials, the following cases were excluded; cases with long postmortem intervals, with diseases or damages to many organs, receiving therapeutic transfusion or infusion and cases of death by fire. In every case, the data was neglected when the organ itself had abnormality or damage, but the data from other organs were included. Thus, the total number of cases was 5,144, comprising 3,322 males and 1,822 females. The materials used are as follows; sudden natural death 941 cases (18.4%), death due to wound(s) 2,476 cases (48.4%), asphyxia 1,261 cases (24.7%), poisoning 257 cases (5.0%), death from cold 68 cases (1.3%), death due to burns 46 cases (0.9%) and others 62 cases (1.2%). The results obtained are presented in Table 1-12.