LEGAL MEDICINE - a brief history - Assoc. Prof. Beatrice Ioan.
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Transcript of LEGAL MEDICINE - a brief history - Assoc. Prof. Beatrice Ioan.
Legal Medicine – border between law and medicine
Developed in parallel with:
Development of law
Development of medicine
Development of criminal law
• Evidences with pre-established value
↓• Evidences that work together to establishing the
truth- their value is established according to particularities of each case
↓• Evidences:
- related to the case
- give the solution to the case
Development of medicine• Death investigation → modern techniques to find the truth
• Dissection/autopsy → development of anatomy and progressive elimination of errors
• Autopsy – forbidden in many countries till the 19th century
• Autopsy- a ”violently popular punishment”↓
• Grave roberry- body snathching
• Burke & Hare, Edinburgh, 1827- 1828
(Ruth Richardson. (2001). Death, dissection and the destitute. University of Chicago Press)
Development of legal medicine
• Hammurabi Code (1728-1686 B.C.)
- Mandatory scientific expertise in cases of violent death or body trauma
- Medical responsibility – medical activity was evaluated and punished according to results
• Ancient Jews, the Bible- references to wounds, homicide, suicide, diagnosis of death, pregnancy, rape etc.
• Ancient Egyptians- mandatory examination of a women condemned to death by a midwife
Development of legal medicine• Ancient Greece – public autopsy
• Hipocrates- lethal wounds
• Iulius Cezar’s autopsy (Antistus)→ only one out of the 22 wounds discovered during the autopsy was lethal
• Iustinian’s Code- the role of the physicians in the judicial trials
• Plinius the Old – sudden death and suicide.
• Sun- Tsi, China (1247)- the first medico-legal book - Lethal and non-lethal trauma- Autopsy- Asphyxiation, sudden death, death during accupuncture
Development of legal medicine
Founded by:
Ambroise Pare (1510-1590)- surgeon, anatomistOn medico-legal reports
Paul Zachias (1602 – 1675)- renaissance scholar
Medico-legal issues- medico-legal psychiatry↓
The relevance of the medical knowledge in the judicial trials
Developments in the field → medical discoveries that have been accepted as evidences in the judicial trials
Development of legal medicine
Autopsy
Johannes Bohn (1640-1718)
- The autopsy technique- all the body cavities should be opened and all the organs examined
- Examination of the lethal violence injuries
Forensic toxicology
•1836- James Marsh- toxicological detection of the arsenic – it was no longer the ”perfect poison”
•1840- Mathieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila – Father of the forensic toxicology- the begining of the scientific forensic toxicology
↓Laffarge case- detection of the arsenic in the organs
of a human body using the Marsh method
Collection of soil from the surroundings of the coffin in cases of exhumation when an intoxication is suspected
Forensic anthropology
•Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914)– antropometry – physical measurements and particular signs- portraits of the felons in a database
• William Herschel (1738- 1822) - fingerprints
• Francis Galton (1822- 1911), Juan Vucetich (1858-1925) - systematization → 4 main types → dactiloscopy
- Francisca Rojas Case
- Argentina – the first country in the world to accept dactiloscopy as an identification method
Alexandre Lacassagne (1843-1924)- founder of forensic anthropology
- The value of the tatoos for identification purposes
- Identification based on the aspect of the victim’ s hairMillery case – hair aspect and bone disease
- Signs of death
- Estimation of the postmortem interval according to cadaveric discoloration of the skin, rigor mortis and algor mortis
Forensic serology
•1901- Landsteiner – blood groups
•Paul Uhlenhuth – differentiation between the human blood and animal blood
Tessnow Case
•Alec John Jeffreys – genetic profile September 10, 1984
↓•1986- Leicestershire – the first murder elucidated using the genetic profiling
Colin Pitchfork case-double rape and murder (1983, 1986)-the first person convicted of a crime based on DNA fingerprinting evidence /
the first to be caught as a result of mass DNA screening
Legal Medicine in RomaniaDates back to the 16th century- official documents on:- Juridical irresponsibility of the mentally ill- The attitude towards the victims of rape- The value of the medico-legal documents from juridical perspective
Evaluation performed by:
→ Wounds- quacks, barbers
→ Poisoning, madness - quacks
→ Sexual offences- midwives, quacks
Examination methods: visual, palpatory, examination of the gastric content
Legal Medicine in Romania
1811- mandatory autopsy in cases of violent death
1806-1812- the autopsy can be performed after 24 hours from death
February 6, 1832- the first medico-legal autopsy
Legal Medicine in Romania
Mina Minovici - organized the field on scientific principles - the value of photographs in the medico-legal
examination
Nicolae Minovici - self-hanging experiments- institutions for re-educating the minors- emergency services
Ştefan Minovici - toxicology laboratory- Faculty of Pharmacy
The first National Institute of Legal Medicine– the muzeum
The first INML- autopsy room
The first National Institute of Legal Medicine -INML Bucharest
• 1898 – Bucharest and Iaşi → the first forensic pathologists – subordinated to the Ministry of Justice – mostly autopsies
Iasi• Autopsy and dissection- permitted since 1685• Autopsy- 4 days; once every 5 years the public access
was permitted• Maria C. Ropala – the first women in the world who
worked as a forensic pathologist
1860- Legal Medicine taught at the Law Faculty
1882- Legal Medicine transffered from the the Law Faculty to Medical Faculty
Medico-legal activities • Autopsy
• Expertise of the living persons (clinical legal medicine)
→ examination and evaluation of the gravity of traumatic injuries (short, mid and long term consequences)
→ evaluation of the mental state
→ filiation expertise- the relationship between parents and children (most frequent presuposed father- child)
• Toxicological examination
Legal Medicine- Criminal law
• Legal Medicine- evidences about various felonies according to the injuries on the victim’s and aggressor’s body
- cause of death
- mechanism
- causal relationship between the injuries and death/ handicap etc.
Legal Medicine- Civil Law
• Examination of the injuries
• Evaluation of health status
• Estimation of the handicap
• Mental health and capacity to sign a selling/donation act
• Legal representative- guardianship
Legal Medicine- Family Law
• Filiation expertise
• Custody of children after divorce- psychiatric expertise
• Cancellation of a marriage
Medico- legal evidence
•Means - according to the scope/objective;
•In due time;
•The conclusion must be supported by scientific evidence;
•The conclusion is checked against the history of the case;
•Limits of the methods must be officially declared;
•Prudence – when the medical aspects can be interpreted in both ways (guily/no guily) - In dubio pro reo!
„You need to know to doubt”... (Lacassagne)