A handy-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by W. Bathurst Woodman and Charles Meymott Tidy.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handy-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by W. Bathurst Woodman and Charles Meymott Tidy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    you had better generally leave gunsmiths and armourers to enter into technical details regarding weapons with which they are familiar, we advise you to learn all you can as to weapons in any given case in which you are concerned. As we shall show you, under Gun-shot Wounds, and as the anecdote above proves, the conviction or acquittal of prisoners often turns on purely technical matters. F. As regards the person, dress, and vjeapons of live suspected assailant or murderer, the same principles must guide you in the examination as are laid down for your guidance in the examination of the 'victims. On the person there may be marks of injuries inflicted in the struggle, when the person assailed has made resistance. So that a mur- derer may be cut about the hands or face, or stabbed in some part with the same knife or other weapon he has used to attack. He may even have gunshot or bullet wounds, or, when firing very close, may be blackened with the powder. Murderers who wish to gratify revenge, or who are actuated by jealousy, and lunatics who first murder and then commit suicide, often shoot or stab themselves. So with patriots and conspirators. You remember Martial’s epigram [xiv., lib. i.] about Arria, the brave wife of Psetus Cecinna of Padua. “ Casta suo gladium eiim traderet Arria Peeto, Quern de visceribus traxerat ipsa suis ; Si qua fides, vulnus, quod feci, non dolet, inquit: Sed quod tu facies, hoc mihi, Paste, dolet! ” In modern times there are many examples of combined murder and suicide. To quote one only at present. In April, 1799, the [Rev.] James Hackman was indicted at the Central Criminal Court for the wilful murder of [Miss] Martha Ray, by shooting her with a pistol just outside Covent Garden Theatre, after the play. She died almost instantly. Her “wound was received in front of the head, in the centra coronalis, and the ball was discharged (came out) under the left ear.” No sooner had he done this, than he shot himself, also in the head, with another pistol. His wound, though severe, was not mortal, though he bled very much. He recovered sufficiently to be tried in a few days. [It happened on the 7th April, and the trial was in the same month.] No sooner had he done the fatal deed, than the “phreuzy,” as he called it, was over. From a letter he wrote, and his confession at the trial, it would appear that jealousy was the motive. He was sentenced to death. A careful examination of the direction of the wounds is of course important here. The murderer’s hands, face, or some other part of the body may bear the marks of nails and teeth. These should be carefully examined and measured. It is very often a good plan to take a wax or clay mould of the teeth and nails of the deceased. Ordinary beeswax (still better if with some oil or tallow), modellers’ clay or plaster of paris, mical and Physiological Observations,”] observes that the viscera in the right half of the body are heavier than those of the left half, and Gratiolet says the left brain is better developed. The majority of mankind, either by instinct or education, are vigrfef-handed. In such, the muscles of the right upper extremity are rather better developed than those of the left. The right chest is also bigger. In some few left- handed persons there is transposition of the viscera (the converse is not always true), in most the left upper extremity and thorax are more muscular than the right arm and chest. In some cases of k/Ghandcdness, the right half of the brain lias been said to be much larger than the left. Ambidextrous persons present the greatest difficulty. There seems no proof of Hippocrates’ assertion that women are never ambidextrous—rather the contrary.