forensic medicine, pathology and science at the turn of the 20th Century

forensic medicine/ pathology

• The development of forensic medicine in the United Kingdom from the 18th Century. Eckert W, The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 1992; 13:124-131 (https://bit.ly/6GHqO3)
• Forensic medicine in Great Britain. I The beginning. Garland AM, The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 1987; 8:269-272(https://bit.ly/5fr5Bb)
• Forensic medicine in Great Britain. II The origins of the British medicolegal system and some historic cases. Mant AK, The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 1987; 8:354-361 (https://bit.ly/5tktcb)
• Changes in the practice of forensic pathology, 1950-85. Mant AK, Medicine, Science and the Law 1986;26: 149-57 (https://bit.ly/5QTZhA)
• Milestones in the development of the British medicolegal system. Mant AK, Medicine, Science and the Law 1977; 17:155-163 (https://bit.ly/6bhvvS)
• A handbook of the practise of forensic medicine (3rd Edition). Johann Ludwig Casper 1861 (Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3, Vol 4)
• Alfred Swaine Taylor (biography), the Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence (1865), Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence (Volume 1) Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence Volume 2 (1873), a Manual of Medical Jurisprudence (1892)
• An essay on the signs of murder in new born children, Mahon PAO (translation 1813)(https://bit.ly/97RfE0)
• Paul Brouardel, Les asphyies par les gaz, les vapeurs et les anesthesiques (1896); La pendaison, la strangulation, la suffocation, la submersion (1897)
• Ambroise Tardieu (Wikipedia), Etude medico-legale sur la strangulation (1859), Les attentats aux moeurs (1867), L'empoisonnement (1867), Forensic Examiner article 2008
• Casper JL, Traite pratique de medecine legale (1862)

post mortem examinations/ autopsies

• Postmortems on the kitchen table. Hollman A, British Medical Journal 2001;323:1472-1473 and rapid responses to this article
• A practical guide for making post-mortem examinations. Thomas AR (1873)
• Post-mortems; what to look for and how to make them. Newth AH, Owen FW (1885)
• The technique of post-mortem examination.  Hektoen L (1894)
• Post-mortem examinations, with especial reference to medico-legal practice. Virchow R (1895) - read in the embedded book reader below
• Post-mortem examinations, methods and technique.  Caven J (1900)
• Post-mortem pathology; a manual of post-mortem examinations and the interpretations to be drawn therefrom; a practical treatise for students and practitioners. Cattell HW (1903)
• Practical pathology including morbid anatomy and post-mortem technique. Miller J (1914)

coroners and inquests

• Getting away with murder? The supression of coroners' inquests in early Victorian England and Wales. Fisher P Local Population Studies 2007; (78):47-62 (https://bit.ly/8JeEhw)
• Getting away with murder? Homicide and the coroners in nineteenth-century London. Emmerichs MB. Social Science History 2001; 25(1): 93-100
• Medicolegal progress in inquests of felonious deaths: Westminster, 1761-1866. Greenwald GI, Greenwald MW, Journal of Legal Medicine 1981; 2:193-264 (https://bit.ly/7y96VV)
• Reporting murder: Fiction in the archives in early modern England, Gaskill M, Social History 1998; 23:1-30
• Legal medicine in history. Clark M, Crawford C (1994)
• The detection of secret homicide: a study of the medico-legal system of investigation of sudden and unexpected deaths, Havard JDJ (1960) and book review in the Cambridge Law Journal 1961;19:251-255

forensic science/ toxicology

• Mathieu Orfila's life (as a toxicologist in the 19th Century) - Chemistry, Medicine and Crime and on the detection of poisons (in the Lancet 1831; 16(398): 72-76) and book search results in Google Books; his story at NLM Visible Proofs exhibition
• Forensic chemistry in 19th Century Britain. Coley NG Endeavour 1998; 22(4): 143-147
• Francoise-Emanuel Fodere
• Sir Robert Christison (and his life story/ autobiography)
• Alfred Swaine Taylor, On poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence and medicine (1875) and on Poisoning with strychnia (1856)
• The odour of (potassium) cyanide. Gwilt JR. The Medico-Legal Journal 1961; 29(2):98-99
• Paul Brouardel, Les asphyies par les gaz, les vapeurs et les anesthesiques (1896)
• Ambroise Tardieu (Wikipedia) L'empoisonnement (1867)
• 50 Years of Forensic Science, Daeid NN (2010), Wiley-Blackwell - for a more recent 'historical review' of forensic science through the eyes of those writing in the Journal of the Forensic Science Society (buy it here)

The Marsh test equipment

Dr. Alfred Swaine Taylor (left) and a colleague, performing the Marsh test on samples taken from the body of John Parsons Cook. The two were looking for traces of arsenic and antimony (1856). National Library of Medicine

• The Marsh test for arsenic (James Marsh) described in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 1836; 21: 229-236
• arsenic at Wolfram Alpha and at Theodore Gray's photographic Periodic Table

Arsenic flametest (Wikimedia)