4. When an animal is examined immediately after death no appearance of note is found in the brain, peritoneal sac, or intestines. Unless death has been very rapid, the lungs are almost always studded on their surface with bright scarlet spots, and sometimes we have seen even the whole parenchyma of a uniform and beautiful scarlet colour. At the same time there never was any effusion either into the air-cells or their cellular tissue. In cases of poisoning that prove fatal before the stage of insensibility comes on, the heart, 2 or 3 m. after death, is found neither contracting nor contractile; its pulmonary cavities are distended, and the blood is dark in those cavities and florid in the mortal. This fact is conformable with what we have observed in the same animals just at the time of death, viz. the contractions of the heart are almost imperceptible even before the breathing ceases, and never continue after it. In the slowest cases, in which coma prevails for some time before death the heart, though very feeble in its contractions towards the close, beats a little after the breathing has ceased, and then the blood is found equally dark in both vascular systems. There is likewise an intermediate variety of poisoning, wherein the stage of insensibility is short, and the heart scarcely survives the stoppage of respiration; and in such cases the blood in the aortal cavities is darker than natural, but still considerably more florid than that of the veins and pulmonary cavities. (CHRISTISON and COINDET, p. 184.).
Hughes was a great writer and a scholar. He actively cooperated with Dr. T.F. Allen to compile his 'Encyclopedia' and rendered immeasurable aid to Dr. Dudgeon in translating Hahnemann's 'Materia Medica Pura' into English. In 1889 he was appointed an Editor of the 'British Homoeopathic Journal' and continued in that capacity until his demise. In 1876, Dr. Hughes was appointed as the Permanent Secretary of the Organization of the International Congress of Homoeopathy Physicians in Philadelphia. He also presided over the International Congress in London.