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MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE.

BY W. P. STRICKLAND, M. D., LL. D.

PERSONAL IDENTITY.

(Continued from page 523, December, 1879.)

In civil and criminal proceedings in law, the question may arise as to the identity of certain persons. The instances of identity of the living in which the medical jurist may be called upon to take part as a witness, are those where the proofs are found to rest almost entirely or altogether upon physiological facts, which he alone can supply. The occasions on which medical evidence is demanded will vary according to circumstances, as, for instance, where the person to be identified is suspected to have committed a crime, whether recently or at a remote period. Or again, where the individual has been abducted in infancy or childhood, and had reappeared in adult age to claim recognition by his friends, or a lost possession, or privilege or right, as in the Tichborne case. In some of these cases, the evidence will turn on corporeal defects, marks on the body, cicatrices of former wounds or diseases, etc. In other cases the evidence will turn on the natural growth of the body to maturity, or that of time and the accidents of life, climate, occupation, etc., in changing the personal appearance.

In some instances, to avoid identification, a criminal or escaped convict may have sought disguise by more summary measures, as by change of dress, shaving the head, or altering the color or the style of adjustment of the hair, allowing the whiskers to grow, or cutting them off when previously worn, or by varying his previous carriage or deportment. With only one of these methods of escaping detection the medical jurist is called to deal. In cases of disputed or doubtful identity, the question has arisen in legal medicine as to the possibility of the disappearance of a scar. With some this is a disputed point, but as a general rule, all scars resulting from wounds and cutaneous diseases which involve any loss of substance, are indelible, the only exception that can be made being in regard to trifling punctured wounds, where but little violence has been done to the skin, and where there has been no loss of substance.

It has been contended by some, that marks and scars made by

the tattooer and by the scarification in cupping, are indelible, but a case is reported of a man, in Berlin, who had letters tattooed on his arm, and scarification made by cupping several years before his death, and no traces of the same could be found, after the most careful medical examination. These marks have in numerous instances been effaced by artificial means, such as the application of blisters, tartar emetic ointment, or other means of producing suppuration of the skin. The kind of material employed by the tattooer influences the permanency of the marks, vermilion being the least and China ink being the most permanent.

Another means resorted to, by those who wish to destroy their identity, is by changing the color of the hair. This is produced by preparations of lead, silver, bismuth, lime, ammonia being first used to remove the fatty substance from the hair. A very common agent is a mixture of lime and oxide of lead in equal parts, or three parts of litharge to two of lime. This mixture, made into a paste with hot water, is applied to the hair for four or five hours. The lime combines with the fatty matter of the hair, while the lead forms with the sulphur of the hair a black sulphide of lead. It should be observed that the use of the above preparations for coloring the hair are often attended with dangerous consequences, such as erysipelas, excoriations of the skin, inflammatory swellings of the face, cerebral disturbances and even permanent insanity.

It is not difficult by close inspection, or by the use of chemical reagents, to detect the false coloring. The metallic sulphides thus formed can be decomposed, and the metals extracted by means of nitric acid, for testing. The hair which has been changed from a dark to a light color by the use of one part of strong liquid chlorine diluted with four parts of water, may also be distinguished from the natural color by the use of appropriate tests.

Another point calling the attention of the medical jurist is the identification of individuals by measurement of footprints made in the ground. It must be noted, however, that the impression of the foot does not always correspond with the foot making it, for it may occur that the footprint may be longer than the shoe, boot or slipper worn, or from the depth of the print, as it is found that in this case it is smaller than the foot which made it. Greater difficulty arises from the impression of the naked foot. If, for

instance, the foot has been covered with blood, the impression made can only lead to the identity of the suspected criminal, when the conformation of the foot and the toes of the party has been so peculiar as to have left traces of that peculiarity on the stain. Besides, it must be noted that the same foot varies in its impression, according to the modes of bringing it down, whether in a rapid progression, or by standing on the spot, or by a slow advance.

Identity has often been mistaken by striking resemblances of persons. Cases have happened in which persons have been taken by their friends from the morgue and buried, who have afterward made their appearance. Identification has often been accomplished by attention to minute circumstances, such as the person being left handed, in cases where a particular wound or injury could have been inflicted only by a left handed person. In a case in which Sir Astley Cooper was a witness, the prisoner, when charged with being left handed, protested that he was not. When called by the court to plead to the indictment, however, he unconsciously held up his left hand.

There are certain medico-legal points which have a bearing upon identity in the dead body, as in cases of murder, accidental or sudden death, poisoning, etc. There is no period after death when these cases cease to demand medical investigation, and which should command the attention of the medical jurist. The special points of investigation are, first, the identification of the body soon after death, before decomposition has commenced; second, the dead body may require to be identified after the commencement of the decomposition of the soft parts; third, the question of identity may have to be settled after the body has been mutilated, or when fragments only of it can be found; fourth, the dead body may require to be identified after it has been reduced to a mere skeleton. The medical examiner will be called on at times to discriminate between the bones of lower animals and man, whether they are found together or separately.

Certain general principles applicable to all the cases which have come under review, are apt to arise in medico-legal practice. These relate to general or special physical appearances, whether in the living or the dead. They are as follows: The age of the individual

or the nearest approximation. 2. His height. 3. The HEAD, and especially the shape of its bones; the hairs, their number and color; the forehead, which may be prominent or compressed; the eyebrows, which may be far apart or meet at their inner extremi ties; the eyes, whether large or small, prominent or sunk; the nose, which may be long, short or flat; the lips, whether large or small, with or without trace of cicatrices; the teeth, few in number, or regularly placed, large or small; the mouth, large or small; the chin, full or pitted, round or pointed; the beard, thin or bushy; the face, broad or long. 4. the neck, whether long or short, thick or thin. 5. The chest, whether well formed or otherwise; the shoulders, whether high or the reverse; the sternum, whether flat, sunk or prominent. 6. The pelvis, whether large or small. 7. The limbs, including the hands and feet, whether large or small; the fingers, whether short or long; the knees, if turned in; the ankles, whether more projecting than usual; the lower limbs and feet, whether of equal length and free or not from deformity. 8. The genitals, if free from any defects of conformation. 9. Whether or not any marks exist on the skin. 10. Cicatrices which may have followed burns or wounds or tumors-marks which seldom become effaced, and which may sometimes, from their seat or their form, direction and extent, afford valuable indications. 11. Disclocations or fractures, any traces of, discoverable. Of these characteristics, the four following are the most important: height, state of the bones and form of the skeleton: teeth, and lastly, the hair.—From Manual of Medical Jurisprudence.

(To be continued.)

At its commencement, November 7, 1879, the Medical Department University, of California, graduated a class of thirteen.

Mr. H. C. Lea announces the early issue of the following works "Nettleship on the Eye,' "Allen's Anatomy," "Cornil & Ranvier's Pathological Histology," "Foster's Physiology," "Greene's Medical Chemistry," "Morris on Skin Diseases," new edition of "Roberts on Renal Diseases," "Charcot on Nervous Diseases," "Brunton's Materia Medica," "Woodbury's Handbook of Practice," "Reynolds' System of Medicine" in three volumes, "Playfair's Midwifery," third edition.

HISTORICAL DEPARTMENT.

CALOMEL CONSIDERED AS A POISON.*
BY THOMAS D. MITCHELL, M. D.,

Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in Transylvania University.

The following article is extracted from an unpublished work, designed as an aid to medical practitioners in the management of the more ordinary cases of poisoning. And as this paper will probably meet the eyes of many who have belonged to my classes, I take this opportunity of saying, that my book will be put to press early in the present season, and to be ready for delivery in the fall.

To some, it may seem strange to introduce calomel in this place. What? calomel poison? Can it be that an article administered in all parts of the civilized world as a cathartic, is deleterious? It is

even so.

It has often been remarked that poisons, acknowledged to be virulent, do not always kill in a short period, but that fatal results may be long deferred. We do not, for that reason, refrain from designating the article by its proper name; and if the enormous doses of calomel that are sometimes packed in the stomach, do not kill the patient directly, the circumstances are often so palpable, that no honest man, competent to judge, could hesitate in pro

*This article may be considered historic, written many years since and widely circulated. Dr. Mitchell, the author, at that time was one of the most prominent physicians of the allopathic school of medicine. Extracts from this have been made, from time to time, until its paternity has almost been lost. A few months since, we copied into the MEDICAL ECLECTIC, as our readers will remember, an extract from this paper-one which is familiar to the medical reformers of every class of practitioners. The editor of the Pacific Medical Journal addresses us a polite note of inquiry, as to where the real literature of this could be found. I was not certain on this point myself, and so answered the editor, promising to hunt it up; and now, having found this article published in Prof. John Bell's Philadelphia Bulletin of Medical Science, an organ of the old school, I have concluded to transfer the entire article into the MEDICAL ECLECTIC, as a part of the medical history of this country. From this, it will be easy to see what the necessity was for the combined efforts of reformers to break up such a pernicious practice of medicine, and, to see now what reason they had for rejoicing at the result. This is truly historic; and no one can say that this article was not written by one of the best authors, and published at that time by one of the leading old school medical journals.-(R. S. N.)

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