Human dissection is strongly frowned upon in most places at this time - it's unlikely that anyone would look into the lungs. However, when someone is alive at the time they are set on fire, their muscles contract. If they are already dead, the muscles do not contract. The more burned the body is, the more difficult it is to get any information. I have no idea when this information became known, sorry.
Your comment made me remember this painting of a 17th century dissection. From the wiki page:
The event can be dated to 16 January 1632: the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons . . . permitted only one public dissection a year, and the body would have to be that of an executed criminal.[1]
Anatomy lessons were a social event in the 17th century, taking place in lecture rooms that were actual theatres, with students, colleagues and the general public being permitted to attend on payment of an entrance fee. The spectators are appropriately dressed for a solemn social occasion.
Edit: After a little more wiki-reading, it seems that the only legal subjects of human dissection in the 17th century were male criminals. That's in the Netherlands anyway; I would guess Spain to be the same if not even more conservative. Dissection of female corpses was not allowed until the 18th century.
This depends on both the amount of soot and the amount of scientific education of the person looking. The mechanics of breathing were not common knowledge in the 17th century; given that Spain was far, far more conservative than the Netherlands, my guess is that you would pretty much have to be a doctor to have any idea about how lungs or the respiratory tract worked (and maybe not even then). The scientific method of verifying hypotheses by experiment/observation wasn't very popular back then either, especially in Spain.
That being said, if your character knows enough and thinks in the right way to dissect and examine the corpse's lungs, carbon in sufficient quantity in the lungs would *show*. Blackened or grayish tissue would be visible. On dissection, burned or inflamed tissue in the throat and nose would be visible too.
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The event can be dated to 16 January 1632: the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons . . . permitted only one public dissection a year, and the body would have to be that of an executed criminal.[1]
Anatomy lessons were a social event in the 17th century, taking place in lecture rooms that were actual theatres, with students, colleagues and the general public being permitted to attend on payment of an entrance fee. The spectators are appropriately dressed for a solemn social occasion.
Edit: After a little more wiki-reading, it seems that the only legal subjects of human dissection in the 17th century were male criminals. That's in the Netherlands anyway; I would guess Spain to be the same if not even more conservative. Dissection of female corpses was not allowed until the 18th century.
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That being said, if your character knows enough and thinks in the right way to dissect and examine the corpse's lungs, carbon in sufficient quantity in the lungs would *show*. Blackened or grayish tissue would be visible. On dissection, burned or inflamed tissue in the throat and nose would be visible too.
(4th-year med student.)
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