legal history , forensic medicine history, forensic science history , mummification , history of autopsy, history of toxicology, history of law,

1. History of
forensic medicine
and toxicology
BY :A.SABITH MEERAN

2. 2
Legal history
• Legal history or the history of law is the study of
how law has evolved and why it changed.
• Ancient Egyptian law, dating as far back as 3000 BC, had
a civil code that was probably broken into twelve books. It
was based on the concept of Ma'at, characterised by
tradition, rhetorical speech, social equality and impartiality.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs depicting goddess
ma’at –goddess of truth and justice

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• By the 22nd century BC, Ur-Nammu, an ancient Sumerian ruler, formulated the first
extant lawcode, consisting of casuistic statements ("if... then...").
• Around 1760 BC, King Hammurabi further developed Babylonian law, by codifying and
inscribing it in stone. Hammurabi placed several copies of his law code throughout the
kingdom of Babylon as stelae, for the entire public to see; this became known as the Codex
Hammurabi.
• The most intact copy of these stelae was discovered in the 19th century by British
Assyriologists, and has since been fully transliterated and translated into various languages,
including English, German and French.
• The code of Hammurabi covers aspects like fraud , theft , adultery ,perjury, slavery , trade etc.
• Eg. If a man found to be guilty of adultery he and his partner should be drown.
Code of hammurabi Hanmmurabi – Babylonian king
Sumerian and Babylonian era

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• The Arthashastra, dating from the 400 BC, and the Manusmriti from 100
BCE were influential treatises in India, texts that were considered authoritative
legal guidance.
• Manusmriti also talks about varna system which is the ancient structure of
indian society.
• During the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent, sharia was
established by the Muslim sultanates and empires, most notably Mughal
Empire's Fatawa-e-Alamgiri, compiled by emperor Aurangzeb and various
scholars of Islam.
• After British colonialism, Hindu tradition, along with Islamic law, was
supplanted by the common law when India became part of the British Empire.
• One of the major legal systems developed during the Middle Ages
was Islamic law and jurisprudence. A number of important legal institutions
were developed by Islamic jurists during the classical period of Islamic
law and jurisprudence.
• One such institution was the Hawala, an early informal value transfer system,
which is mentioned in texts of Islamic jurisprudence as early as the 8th
century. Hawala itself later influenced the development of the Aval in French
civil law and the Avallo in Italian law.
• the major precepts of sharia were passed down directly from the Islamic
prophet Muhammad.
Judiciary document depicting
sharia – 8th century AD
Chanakya – author of arthasasthra
Ancient India and Sharia

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• Traditional Chinese law refers to the laws, regulations and rules used in China up
to 1911, when the last imperial dynasty fell.
• It incorporates elements of both Legalist and Confucian traditions of social order and
governance.
• To Westerners, perhaps the most striking feature of the traditional Chinese criminal
procedure is that it was an inquisitorial system where the judge, usually the district
magistrate, conducts a public investigation of a crime, rather than an adversarial
system where the judge decides between attorneys representing the prosecution and
defense. "The Chinese traditionally despised the role of advocate and saw such
people as parasites who attempted to profit from the difficulties of others. The
magistrate saw himself as someone seeking the truth, not a partisan for either side.“
• Two traditional Chinese terms approximate "law" in the modern Western sense. The
first, fǎ (法), means primarily "norm" or "model". The second, lǜ (律), is usually
rendered as "statute".
• Multiple corporal punishments were implemented by the Qin, such as death by
boiling, chariots, beating, and permanent mutilation in the form of tattooing and
castration. People who committed crimes were also sentenced to hard labor for the
state.
• Legalism adopted from HAN FEI ZI [Chinese thinker] was used by QIN dynasty in
221 BC.
• Legalism encompasses punishments and rewards.
Han fei zi - Legalist
China-legalism

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• Confucianism, also known as Ruism, is a system of thought and
behavior originating in ancient China.
• Confucianism developed from what was later called the Hundred Schools
of Thought from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–
479 BCE).
• The basic law is that each one should perform his own duty but not other’s
duty.eg. A father should do his own duties as father but not his son’s duty
and vice-versa.
• Taoism was also prevalent in china in early days.
• It was established by zhuanzgi – a Chinese philosopher.
• His famous butterfly dream story is explained here.
Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself
and doing as he pleased. He didn't know that he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he
was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he
was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly
there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.
confucious
zhuanzgi
Confucianism and Taoism

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• YASSA , the forty millenary oral law code of the Mongols declared in public in Bokhara by
Genghis Khan de facto law of the Mongol Empire even though the "law" was kept secret
and never made public.1200AD
• It is believed that the Yassa was supervised by Genghis Khan himself and his
stepbrother Shihihutag who was then high judge of the Mongol Empire. Genghis Khan
appointed his second son Chagatai (later Chagatai Khan) to oversee the execution of the
laws.
Genghis khan
 During the Byzantine Empire the Justinian
Code was expanded and remained in force until
the Empire fell.
 The Corpus Juris (or Iuris) Civilis ("Body of
Civil Law") is the modern name for a collection
of fundamental works in jurisprudence, issued
from 529 to 534 by order of Justinian I, Eastern
Roman Emperor. It is also sometimes referred
to as the Code of Justinian.
Justinian 1
Mongols and Byzantian empire

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The canon law of the Catholic Church is the system of laws and legal principles made and
enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external
organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the
mission of the Church.
It was the first modern Western legal system and is the oldest continuously functioning legal
system in the West, while the unique traditions of Oriental canon law govern the 23 Eastern
Catholic particular churches sui iuris.
Canon law
Gratian,
the "Father of Canon Law"

9. Origins of forensic
medicine and sciences

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• The ancient world lacked standardized forensic practices, which aided criminals in escaping
punishment. Criminal investigations and trials heavily relied on forced confessions and
witness testimony.
• The first written account of using medicine and entomology to solve criminal cases is
attributed to the book of Xi Yuan Lu (translated as Washing Away of Wrongs), written in
China by Song Ci (宋慈, 1186–1249) in 1248, who was a director of justice, jail and
supervision, during the Song dynasty.
• Song Ci ruled regulation about autopsy report for court, how to protect the evidence in the
examining process, the reason why workers must show examination to public impartiality. He
concluded methods on how to make antiseptic and to reappear the hidden injury from dead
bodies and bones (using sunlight under red-oil umbrella and vinegar); how to calculate the
death time (according to weather and insects); how to wash dead body for examining the
different reasons of death. At that time, the book had given methods to distinguish suicide or
pretending suicide.

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• Methods from around the world involved saliva and examination of the mouth and tongue
to determine innocence or guilt, as a precursor to the Polygraph test. In
ancient India, some suspects were made to fill their mouths with dried rice and spit it back
out. Similarly, in ancient China, those accused of a crime would have rice powder placed
in their mouths.
• In ancient middle-eastern cultures, the accused were made to lick hot metal rods briefly. It
is thought that these tests had some validity since a guilty person would produce less
saliva and thus have a drier mouth; the accused would be considered guilty if rice was
sticking to their mouths in abundance or if their tongues were severely burned due to lack
of shielding from saliva.

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• In 16th-century Europe, medical practitioners in army and university settings began to
gather information on the cause and manner of death. Ambroise Paré, a French
army surgeon, systematically studied the effects of violent death on internal organs.
• Two Italian surgeons, Fortunato Fidelis and Paolo Zacchia, laid the foundation of
modern pathology by studying changes that occurred in the structure of the body as the
result of disease.
Ambroise pare

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Ballistics and
anthropometry

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• The French police officer Alphonse Bertillon was the first to apply the
anthropological technique of anthropometry to law enforcement, thereby
creating an identification system based on physical measurements. Before
that time, criminals could only be identified by name or photograph.
• Dissatisfied with the ad hoc methods used to identify captured criminals in
France in the 1870s, he began his work on developing a reliable system of
anthropometrics for human classification
• Bertillon created many other forensics techniques, including forensic
document examination, the use of galvanoplastic compounds to
preserve footprints, ballistics, and the dynamometer, used to determine the
degree of force used in breaking and entering. Although his central methods
were soon to be supplanted by fingerprinting, "his other contributions like
the mug shot and the systematization of crime-scene photography remain in
place to this day."
Anthropometry
Bertillons
manual
anthropometry

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• The word ballistics comes from the Greek ballein, meaning "to throw".
• The earliest known ballistic projectiles were stones and spears, and the throwing
stick.
• The oldest evidence of stone-tipped projectiles, which may or may not have been
propelled by a bow, dating to c. 64,000 years ago, were found in Sibudu Cave,
present day-South Africa. The oldest evidence of the use of bows to shoot arrows
dates to about 10,000 years ago; it is based on pinewood arrows found in the
Ahrensburg valley north of Hamburg.
• The first devices identified as guns appeared in China around 1000 AD, and by the
12th century the technology was spreading through the rest of Asia, and into
Europe by the 13th century.
crossbow catapult
Ballistics

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• After millennia of empirical development, the discipline of ballistics was initially
studied and developed by Italian mathematician Niccolò Tartaglia in
1531. although he continued to use segments of straight-line motion, conventions
established by Avicenna and Albert of Saxony, but with the innovation that he
connected the straight lines by a circular arc
• Galileo established the principle of compound motion in 1638, using the principle
to derive the parabolic form of the ballistic trajectory.
• Ballistics was put on a solid scientific and mathematical basis by Isaac Newton,
with the publication of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687. This
gave mathematical laws of motion and gravity which for the first time made it
possible to successfully predict trajectories.
Niccolo tartaglia

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17
⬗ Toxicology

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• Dioscorides, a Greek physician in the court of the Roman emperor Nero,
made the first attempt to classify plants according to their toxic and
therapeutic effect.
• Ibn Wahshiyya wrote the Book on Poisons in the 9th or 10th century.
• Mathieu Orfila is considered the modern father of toxicology, having given
the subject its first formal treatment in 1813 in his Traité des poisons, also
called Toxicologie générale.
• Theophrastus Phillipus Auroleus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493–
1541) (also referred to as Paracelsus, from his belief that his studies were
above or beyond the work of Celsus – a Roman physician from the first
century) is also considered "the father" of toxicology.
• He is credited with the classic toxicology maxim , ‘the dose makes the
poison’.
Orfila – Spanish
toxicologist

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• A method for detecting arsenious oxide, simple arsenic, in corpses was devised in
1773 by the Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, His work was expanded, in
1806, by German chemist Valentin Ross, who learned to detect the poison in the
walls of a victim's stomach.
• James Marsh was the first to apply this new science to the art of forensics
• He combined a sample containing arsenic with sulfuric acid and arsenic-free zinc,
resulting in arsine gas. The gas was ignited, and it decomposed to pure metallic
arsenic, which, when passed to a cold surface, would appear as a silvery-black
deposit. So sensitive was the test, known formally as the Marsh test, that it could
detect as little as one-fiftieth of a milligram of arsenic.
Apparatus for the arsenic test,
devised by James Marsh

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fingerprinting

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• Sir William Herschel was one of the first to advocate the use of
fingerprinting in the identification of criminal suspects. While working for
the Indian Civil Service, he began to use thumbprints on documents as a
security measure to prevent the then-rampant repudiation of signatures in
1858.
• In 1880, Dr. Henry Faulds, a Scottish surgeon in a Tokyo hospital,
published his first paper on the subject in the scientific journal Nature,
discussing the usefulness of fingerprints for identification and proposing a
method to record them with printing ink. He established their first
classification and was also the first to identify fingerprints left on a vial.
• Faulds wrote to Charles Darwin with a description of his method, but, too
old and ill to work on it, Darwin gave the information to his cousin, Francis
Galton, who was interested in anthropology.
• Having been thus inspired to study fingerprints for ten years, Galton
published a detailed statistical model of fingerprint analysis , He had
calculated that the chance of a "false positive" (two different individuals
having the same fingerprints) was about 1 in 64 billion.
Francis galton

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DNA analysis

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• Forensic DNA analysis was first used in 1984. It was developed
by Sir Alec Jeffreys, who realized that variation in the genetic code
could be used to identify individuals and to tell individuals apart
from one another.
• The first application of DNA profiles was used by Jefferys in a
double murder mystery in the small English town of Narborough,
Leicestershire, in 1985.
Alec jeffreys

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History of AUTOPSY

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• Around 3000 BCE, ancient Egyptians were one of the
first civilizations to practice the removal and
examination of the internal organs of humans in the
religious practice of mummification.
• Autopsies that opened the body to determine the
cause of death were attested at least in the early third
millennium BC, although they were opposed in many
ancient societies where it was believed that the
outward disfigurement of dead persons prevented
them from entering the afterlife (as with the Egyptians,
who removed the organs through tiny slits in the body).
• Notable Greek autopsists were Galen (AD 129- c. 200/
216), Erasistratus and Herophilus of Chalcedon, who
lived in 3rd century BCE Alexandria, but in general,
autopsies were rare in ancient Greece.

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• In 44 BC, Julius Caesar was the subject of an official autopsy after his
murder by rival senators, the physician's report noting that the second
stab wound Caesar received was the fatal one. Julius Caesar had
been stabbed a total of 23 times.
• In 1543, Andreas Vesalius conducted a public dissection of the body
of a former criminal. He asserted and articulated the bones, this
became the world's oldest surviving anatomical preparation. It is still
displayed at the Anatomical museum at the University of Basel.
• In the mid-1800s, Carl von Rokitansky and colleagues at the Second
Vienna Medical School began to undertake dissections as a means to
improve diagnostic medicine.
• The 18th-century medical researcher Rudolf Virchow, in response to a
lack of standardization of autopsy procedures, established and
published specific autopsy protocols (one such protocol still bears his
name). He also developed the concept of pathological processes.
Rudolf virchow

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Mummification

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This is the step-by-step process of how mummification took place:
• Insert a hook through a hole near the nose and pull out part of the
brain
• Make a cut on the left side of the body near the tummy
• Remove all internal organs
• Let the internal organs dry
• Place the lungs, intestines, stomach and liver inside canopic jars
• Place the heart back inside the body
• Rinse inside of body with wine and spices
• Cover the corpse with natron (salt) for 70 days
• After 40 days stuff the body with linen or sand to give it a more
human shape
• After the 70 days wrap the body from head to toe in bandages
• Place in a sarcophagus (a type of box like a coffin)
• If the person had been a Pharaoh, he would be placed inside his
special burial chamber with lots of treasure!
Anubis [protector of
underworld] mummifies a
pharaoh

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Exposed mummy of king
Tutankhamun[1334-1325 BC , 18th
dynasty of Egypt]
Mummy with sarcophagus still
intact

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