Thou makest the shells to swell, the wine to bubble, and the corpse to putrefy!
"Salammbo"
Gustave Flaubert
If an organic substance is exposed in the open air to the action of the sun and rain, it will in time putrefy, or be dissolved into its component elements, consisting usually of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon.
"The Student's Elements of Geology"
Sir Charles Lyell
For he believed that the cities, weak individually, could be preserved by nothing else but a mutual assistance under the closest bond of the common interest; and, as the members of the body live and breathe by the union of all in a single natural growth, and on the dissolution of this, when once they separate, pine away and putrefy, in the same manner are cities ruined by being dissevered, as well as preserved when, as the members of one great body they enjoy the benefit of that providence and counsel that govern the whole.
"Plutarch-Lives-of-the-noble-Grecians-and-Romans"
Clough, Arthur Hugh