14. The state of the brain and spinal cord.

After a thorough consideration of the results of the examination, conclusions must be drawn from this examination; never from the statements of others. The conclusions commonly relate to whether death was due to natural or unnatural causes; if to unnatural causes, what are the facts which lead the examiner to this opinion. As the conclusions are intended to form a summary of the whole report, they must be brief and tersely stated. PERSONAL IDENTITY, INCLUDING THE METHODS USED FOR ITS DETERMINATION IN THE DEAD AND LIVING. BY IRVING C. ROSSE, A.M., M.D., F.R.G.S. (ENG.), _Professor of Nervous Diseases, Georgetown University; Membre du Congrès International d’Anthropologie Criminelle, etc._ PERSONAL IDENTITY. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. Identity is the determination of the individuality of a person. In jurisprudence the term is applied to the recognition of a person who is the object of a judicial action. The establishment of the individuality of a person is known as _absolute_ identity; while the relations of a person with some particular act is known as _relative_ identity. The great number and variety of facts concerned in the investigation of questions of identity are of considerable gravity and importance in their juridical bearing, and at the same time they are among the most interesting and most useful of the applications of modern medicine to the purposes of the law.[569] Among the varied researches of legal medicine looking to an interpretation of facts, no other question occurs in which the solution depends more upon morphological and anatomical knowledge, and none is more dependent upon purely objective, visible, tangible facts. Personal identity often constitutes the entire subject-matter of dispute in a civil case. Upon it may depend the question of absence or of marriage, of kinship or of filiation involving the possession of an estate, in which case the court often requires the most subtle of scientific evidence to assist in its decision. Many anthropological and medical facts, now appropriated by criminology and penal science, are useful in proving not only the present but in attesting future identity, thereby preventing in great measure the dissimulation of prisoners, deserters, false claimants to life insurance, fraudulent pensioners, and the like. Such matters are of daily occurrence. The special agents of the U. S. Pension Office detect and cause the punishment of many fraudulent claimants. Stratagems and conspiracies to defraud life-insurance companies go much further than mere substitution. Instead of a “fraudulent” a positive death may come up for investigation, and in order to defraud an insurance company of a large amount, a body may even be procured by homicide to consummate the deception, as was done in the Goss-Udderzook tragedy near Baltimore in 1872. A celebrated case now before the Supreme Court of the United States and involving the question of personal identity is that of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, the New York Life Insurance Company, and the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut (Consolidated), plaintiffs in error, vs. Sallie E. Hillmon. It is pre-eminently in criminal trials that the personal identity of the victim often constitutes an essential connecting link. Before it can move, the law requires, at the outset, proof of the individuality of both the author of a crime and of the victim. I shall, therefore, not touch upon such elusive individuals as Charlie Ross and Jack the Ripper, but limit my remarks to a synthetical exposition of the best-known facts regarding identification of the dead body and the interpretation of its organic remains. The identity of a living person, or even our own identity, is often a difficult point to establish. It may also require medical evidence, oftentimes of a most involved character, to establish the fact of death. Hence the medico-legal process of connecting a dead body, or the remains or traces of the same, with a human being once known to have lived and moved on earth, is beset with difficulties that may give rise to still greater antagonisms of evidence. The question of personal identity is one of the hardest that could possibly come before a court. Celebrated cases and judicial errors have given it great notoriety. There are consequently few questions in forensic medicine that require more attention and sagacity, and none upon which the medical legist should pronounce with more reserve and circumspection. Medical men are absolutely the _only_ persons qualified to assist in resolving the really delicate question of personal identity; yet the physician and the lawyer pursue the same line of logic and of inquiry. As the former must have a subject to dissect or to operate upon, so must the lawyer in pursuing a criminal investigation first prove a visible material substance known in legal phraseology as the _corpus delicti_, which he must connect with some personality, with some human being once known to have lived. In this important process the physician’s testimony being the indispensable guide of the court’s inference, he should limit himself to purely anatomical and material knowledge. The medical expert has absolutely nothing to do with guilt or innocence, as that is a question for the jury. He should, above all things, be absolutely free from prejudice, suspicion, or undue suggestion, and should remember that in thus sinking his personality his sole function as a skilled witness in cases of identity is to furnish testimony which, when taken in connection with other evidence in the case, may establish such a _corpus delicti_ as would justify the inference of a crime. A nice point may arise as to dispensing with the proof from the body itself, when the substantial general fact of a homicide is proved _aliunde_, as in the case of a criminal causing the disappearance of his victim’s body by means of its decomposition in lime or other chemical menstrua, or by submerging it in an unfathomable spot in the sea. Under circumstances such as the following: a person is seen to enter a building and is not seen to leave it, although all means of egress therefrom are watched; another person is seen to ignite the building, which thereupon burns down, and the charred remains of a human body are found in the ruins; the proof of identity from the body itself might be dispensed with in view of the substantial general fact of a homicide having been committed. In a delicate case where the man of art hesitates and finds no _corpus delicti_, the investigation of imprints and stains may give a clew of great value to the expert. Yet it is only upon absolute evidence, and in the strongest possible case, that the fundamental principle of the _corpus delicti_ is disregarded. In the case of Ruloff, the child’s body was not produced and no trace of it could be alleged to have been found; nevertheless the prisoner was found guilty of murder. This case was speedily overruled (18 N. Y., 179), on the ground that a dangerous precedent had been pronounced. So indispensable is the showing of the _corpus delicti_ in cases of recognition that lawyers have come to regard even the judicial confession of an accused as often the flimsiest and most unsatisfactory kind of evidence. Numerous cases of demonstrated fallibility of confessions are cited in the books, where the statement was utterly lacking in anything except motive or hallucination. In the Proceedings of the New York Medico-Legal Society, December 6th, 1876, Mr. James Appleton Morgan mentions the case of a German servant-girl who assured her mistress, whose little boy, a child of seven, had just died and been buried, that she (the servant) had poisoned the boy. The servant swore to her crime and was taken into custody, and it was only when no poison was discovered upon exhuming the child’s body and examining its stomach that against her own protest she was acquitted of the possibility of the crime. Another case of the kind that has had medico-legal notoriety was tried a few years ago before a court in Brittany. The accused declared that he had killed his servant and thrown the body in a pond. His guilt seemed certain, when the alleged victim put in an appearance, thus reducing the evidence to the strange hallucination that had prompted the confession. But the most wonderful of these is the celebrated case of Boorn, in which medico-legal evidence took no part. In view of the seeming hopelessness of his case, the accused confessed to murder in expectation of mercy from the court, but was finally acquitted on the alleged victim walking into court and confronting the man who had sworn to having killed him. Although wisdom and experience point to the necessity of showing something corporal and material in cases involving questions of life and death, yet very small traces or minute remains of a human body may, in certain circumstances, constitute a _corpus delicti_ that may lead to trial if not to conviction. In 1868 the Lambert case, for murder on the high seas, was tried before Judge Benedict in the United States Court, the only _corpus delicti_ alleged being a large pool of blood and brains found on the forecastle of a ship at sea, out of sight of land or other vessel. Circumstances, acts, and words pointed strongly to the murder of one of the crew, who was believed to have been brained with an axe and thrown overboard. Notwithstanding the fact that animosity was known to exist between the accused and the missing man, it further appeared that the accused, in a state of great excitement, had followed the missing man forward and returned alone with a hatchet in his hand, yet the jury in this instance were not satisfied as to the establishment of a _corpus delicti_ beyond a reasonable doubt and accordingly failed to convict. Two classical cases, that of Gardelle and of Dr. Webster, mentioned in many of the books, stand forth as instances of conviction where fragments of the human body were recognized after attempts to destroy them by intense heat. The conviction of Dr. Webster rested almost entirely upon medico-legal evidence; but it is probable that upon the same circumstantial evidence the increased industry of counsel would have so rung the changes in regard to its uncertain and unsafe nature, and would have so used the knowledge gained from advanced discoveries in the regions of the probabilities of science, as to have secured the acquittal of the prisoner had the trial taken place at the present time. A similar affair of great medico-legal interest is the Goss-Udderzook tragedy, already referred to, an account of which is given by Drs. Lewis and Bombaugh among the “Remarkable Stratagems and Conspiracies for Defrauding Life Insurance Companies,” New York and London, 1878. IDENTITY OF BURNT REMAINS. The medical jurist will no doubt find cremation a formidable barrier in elucidating the question of identity, although the entire destruction of a dead body is a matter of extreme difficulty. In the case of calcination chemical analysis of the ash would detect the phosphate of lime, but this would throw no light upon the subject, since the ash of human bones and that of the lower animals is identical. If the burnt bone is entire, the state of the epiphyses may enlighten the question of the determination of age. The following two cases, in which fragments or portions of bone had been submitted to the action of fire, show how medical training and some knowledge of comparative anatomy may contribute to the establishment of guilt or may attest innocence. In the case of The Queen _vs._ John Henry Wilson, for murder, the accused burnt his step-father in a lime-kiln for over a week, and on strewing ashes from the kiln fine fragments of bone picked up were afterward identified as human. At the trial identity rested on the fact of finding two buttons and a buckle, which were recognized as part of the deceased’s wearing apparel when last seen. In the second case, that of a young woman supposed to be in the family way who should not have been, it was thought that she had been confined and made away with the infant. Under this supposition the premises where she lived were searched by the chief constable, who found in the stove some bones and fragments of bones that had been burnt. On examination by a qualified medical man, the fragments turned out to be not human bones, but those of some other animal, presumably those of a pig and of a chicken, which the family, who lived in a tenement-house without a back yard, had put in the stove to get rid of the refuse.[570] IDENTIFICATION OF HUMAN BONES. In deciding whether certain bones are human or not, the medical jurist should exercise great caution in venturing an opinion as to the precise animal of which he may believe they formed a part. There is no great difficulty in detecting the smallest fragments of bone by means of the microscope, but we cannot say with safety whether the fragments belonged to a mouse, a man, or an elephant. A real difficulty occurs in recognizing the nature and origin of the bony remains when only a small fragment or a single bone is submitted for report. If a sufficient portion of the skeleton be submitted it can be easily recognized as human, as in the imbedded remains of the troglodyte found in the limestone deposit of Luray Cave, Virginia, and only in the exceptional case of the bones of one of the manlike apes could a difficulty of distinction arise. The characteristic signs that distinguish a gorilla skeleton, for instance, are the smaller thumb; notable length of tibia and of radius, although this relative length of extremities has been remarked in negroes; small facial angle, 30° to 40° in the monkey, 70° to 80° in man; very inferior cranial capacity, the maximum in a gorilla being 550 cubic centimetres, while the minimum in the human species is from 970 with a maximum of 1,500 to 1,900 centimetres; a low index of the foramen magnum; convexity of the squamo-parietal suture, and larger and more salient canines and incisors. The volume of the endocranium in the female gorilla, like that of the human species, is smaller than that of the male; this difference being almost 80 c.c. for the anthropoid female. In studying the osseous system it should be remembered that certain modifying elements, as artificial compression, pathological deformities, posthumous distortions, and hygrometric conditions, may affect particularly the skull, and if due allowance be not made for these the study may lead to glaring absurdities. Not longer ago than 1725 there was found in a quarry at Œningen the skull of a fossil batrachian compressed into rude resemblance to the human cranium, which was announced to the world as Scheuchzer’s “_Homo diluvii testis et theoscopos_,” and as the remains of one of the sinful antediluvians who perished in the Noachic deluge. ARE THE BONES OLD OR RECENT? An important point may arise in questions of identification of bones as to the oldness: whether they are old or recent. The first indication is furnished by the presence or by the absence of the soft parts. The existence of the periosteum and of the spinal marrow is the most persistent proof of a recent state; but these alone with the soft parts are usually destroyed in two or three years. In ordinary circumstances a body becomes skeletonized in about ten years, although in exceptional cases the cadaver may resist decomposition after many years.[571] This summer in transferring an old cemetery in Georgetown, D. C., the remains of the grandmother of one of the writer’s patients were found in such a state of preservation as to be easily recognized after fifty years of burial. More recently, in unearthing the remains of an old graveyard in East Washington, a striking peculiarity was noticed in the fact that many bodies of young people buried in recent years when taken up consisted of a few blackened bones and shreds of grave-clothes. while the remains of many older people buried long before the Civil War were found in an excellent state of preservation. One of these was a Mr. Fullin, who died from the effects of a sunstroke forty years ago and was buried in a metallic case. An old lady who attended his funeral was present when his remains were unearthed and said they looked as natural as when he was laid away in 1852. The features were well preserved and even the white linen of the shroud was unsoiled. Alterations in the texture of the bone, such as that caused by dryness and by diminution in the proportion of organic matter, may be ascertained by histological examination, and one of the characters of age may be furnished by taking into consideration the specific weight. Placing the skull at an average density of 1,649, that of an infant would be 1,515, an adult 1,726, and that of old age 1,636. Ascertaining the proportion of organic and inorganic matter, the phosphates and carbonates, by chemical means may furnish an additional help in the interpretation of the remains. With all these diagnostic methods it may still be impossible to establish identity either absolute or relative, even where a whole skeleton is in question. The evidence may, however, be of great juridical use to the accused, as in the case of Van Solen, tried for the murder of Dr. Henry Harcourt, where the collective facts pointed to the identification of a body dead two years. The jury, however, after a second trial, were instructed to acquit unless they were certain that the remains were Harcourt’s. They acquitted, as no _one_ decided and apparent feature was known to have existed by which the remains could be identified beyond a doubt.[572] IDENTITY IN CASE OF ENTIRE SKELETON OR IN CASE OF ISOLATED BONES. Where an entire human skeleton has been discovered, the objects of inquiry here, as in the case of fragments or remains, are to establish the identity of the victim and that of the author of the act, and to collect all available information relative to the nature of the death and to the diverse circumstances attending the commission of the deed. In gathering evidence from the examination of the skeleton or of isolated bones, with a view to find out the probable cause of death of the person of whom they form a part, a great variety of questions will arise for consideration, such as those relating to race, stature, age, sex, and trade or occupation; the exterior signs furnished by dentition; the traces of congenital peculiarity or of injury, and the signs of disease either hereditary or acquired. DETERMINATION OF RACE. The question of race in connection with the subject of identification is of more than usual importance in the United States, owing to our motley population, composed as it is of aboriginal Americans, Chinamen, negroes, and of Europeans and their descendants. I well remember the first human bones that I saw exhumed. They were discovered in digging the foundation of a building near a kitchen-midden on one of the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. The apparent oldness of the bones and the finding of stone arrow-heads, tomahawks, and fragments of aboriginal pottery in the immediate vicinity were additional accessory facts that strengthened the presumption of the bones being those of a Choptank Indian. Roughly speaking, there is not much trouble in recognizing the platycnemic tibiæ of the mound-builder, the skull of a Flathead Indian, an Inca skull, a negro skull, or even the skull peculiar to the lower order of Irish. In many very old skulls a considerable portion of hair is often found attached. This of course may lend assistance in the matter of race identity. A few years since I undertook at the Smithsonian Institution a series of micro-photographs of the structure and arrangement of hair, with a view to race classification as suggested by Professor Huxley. Various specimens of hair from the yellow races were compared with that of fair and of blue-eyed persons, with the hair of negroes, with reindeer hair, and with the hair-like appendage found on the fringy extremity of the baleen plates in the mouth of a “bowhead” whale. The experiments, though far from satisfactory, were sufficiently conclusive to enable one to recognize approximately the horse-like hair of some of the yellow races, that of the negro, and that of a blond Caucasian. Beyond the forementioned characteristics, the task of race recognition from observation of the skull is one of great difficulty and perplexity with illusory results. A considerable experience of several years with the large collection of skulls in the Army Medical Museum enables me to speak advisedly on this point.[573] Although the technical procedures of craniometry require special measurements and employ an arsenal of special instruments, the results are far from conclusive as regards the determination of human types. Time and space do not permit the mention even in epitome of the various methods most relied upon by trained craniologists. Among the oldest operations of cephalometry, as well as the most incomplete, is the measurement of the so-called facial angle, which is employed to distinguish the skull of a lower order of animal from that of the negro and the white man. This angle, acute in the skulls of the lower animals, approaches a right angle as we ascend the zoological scale; being from 30° to 65° in the various apes; 75° in the Mongolian; about 70° in the negro, and between 80° and 90° for whites. The prognathous (projecting) jaws of the negro cranium are distinctive, as well as the shape of the nasal opening, which in the black is an equilateral triangle, while it is isosceles in the white. The books usually speak of the Eskimo skull as pyramidal, which in point of fact is not true. Inspection and examination of a large collection of Eskimo crania has changed and greatly modified some of the previous notions of the conventional Eskimo skull. From more than one hundred, collected in the vicinity of Bering Strait,[574] I find that the skulls present very considerable variations among themselves; some being brachycephalic, others dolichocephalic. In many the facial angle is 80°, and in one instance 84°, which exceeds that observed by me in many German skulls. Nor is the prominence of the zygomatic arches such a constant difference in the configuration as to justify one in speaking of the skull as pyramidal. On the contrary, in many of the specimens lines drawn from the most projecting part of the zygomatic arch and touching the sides of the frontal bone, instead of forming a triangle on being elongated, might, like the asymptotes of a parabola, be extended to infinity and never meet. The index of the foramen magnum in these skulls is about the same as that of European crania. The internal capacity shows marked difference, the cubic contents of the endocranium averaging that of the French or Germans. As some modern writers lay great stress on the measurement of the cranial capacity, not only as an aid to race identification, but as an adjunct in the study of the criminal and insane classes, it may not be amiss to give the salient facts relative thereto. It is admitted that the cranial capacity may vary with the intellectual state, hydrocephalic skulls, of course, being excluded. Microcephalic adults give a figure inferior to that of gorillas, some being as low as 419 c.c. Andaman Islanders and autochthonous Australians appear, in respect to cranial capacity, to be most badly off. The capacity of an Andaman has been found as low as 1,094 c.c.; while that of Australians (autochthonous) and of some American tribes show an average capacity of 1,224 c.c. in the normal as well as in their deformed crania. The cranial capacity increases in the yellow races and attains its maximum in the white races. In the middle European race 1,500 c.c. may be accepted as the average; 1,750 c.c. is the maximum, and anything above is macrocephalic; while the minimum is 1,206 c.c., which is rather too low than too high. According to Topinard’s nomenclature of the cranial capacity, macrocephalic in the adult European male are those having a capacity of 1,950 c.c. and above; a large skull is one of 1,950 to 1,650 c.c.; average or ordinary, 1,650 to 1,450 c.c.; small, 1,450 to 1,150 c.c.; microcephalic 1,150 c.c. and below. It would seem that the skulls of the insane are below the type, a measurement of sixteen male skulls giving an average of only 1,449 c.c. Scotchmen head the list with the most voluminous skulls, and according to a tabular statement made up from Welcker, Aitken, Broca, and Meigs, the English come next, with a capacity of 1,572 c.c. Then follow Eskimo, 1,483 c.c.; Germans, 1,448 c.c.; French, 1,403 to 1,461 c.c.; South African negroes, 1,372 c.c.; Ancient Peruvians, 1,361 c.c.; Malay, 1,328 c.c.; Mexican, 1,290 c.c.; Hottentot and Polynesian, each 1,230 c.c.; Australians, 1,364 c.c.; and Nubians, 1,313 c.c. The cranial capacity in man, like that of the anthropoid apes, varies according to sex, the difference being so great that it is necessary to measure separately. In the troglodyte skulls of prehistoric times the variation is not more than 99.5 c.c.; but in the contemporaneous races the difference varies from 143 to 220 c.c. French craniologists usually speak of the Auvernats as possessing the highest cerebral capacity (1,523 c.c.), and mention the skull of a Parisian of 1,900 c.c. as the highest known. Some Eskimo skulls, however, measure from 1,650 to 1,715 c.c., and two eurycephalic Indian skulls in the anatomical section of the Army Medical Museum measure respectively 1,785 and 1,920 c.c. Mr. Havelock Ellis, speaking of the psychic characteristics of criminals, says that the lower human races present a far larger proportion of anatomical abnormities than the ordinary European population; and Sir William Turner writes of the skulls collected during the _Challenger_ expedition that although their number is certainly too limited to base any broad generalization on, as to the relative frequency of occurrence of particular variations in the different races, there is obviously a larger proportion of important variations than would occur in a corresponding number of skulls of the white races. Thus, for example, the squamo-frontal articulation is found in less than two per cent of European skulls, while it is found in twenty per cent of negroes, according to Ecker, and 16.9 in Australian skulls, according to Virchow. Again, the spheno-pterygoid foramen is found in 4.8 per cent of European skulls and in 20 per cent of American Indians; 30 per cent in Africans; 32 per cent in Asiatics, and 50 per cent in Australians. The wormian bones are also more common among the lower races; as a rule, the cranial sutures coalesce much earlier and the teeth are more precocious. PHOTOGRAPHY, though of undoubted service in craniometry, has been applied as a crucial test in the matter of identity and found wanting. It is objected to on the ground that it has no character of precision, and that photographs of the skull have the common defect of being central, not orthogonal projections, such as anthropometry requires. Besides, the lenses of cameras are not uniformly perfect. Anatomists know, moreover, that salient differences in any collection of crania prevent methodical enumeration and constitute the stumbling-block of ethnic craniology. Cephalometry shows, further, that dolichocephalic, mesaticephalic, and brachycephalic skulls do not belong exclusively to the white, the yellow, or the black race, but exist among the three as a result of evolution. On this subject Professor Lombroso, among the foremost contemporaneous medico-legal writers, cites the cranial asymmetry of Pericles, of Romagnosi, of Bichat, of Kant, of Chenevix, and of Dante, who presented an abnormal development of the left parietal bone and two osteomata on the frontal bone. Besides, there is the Neanderthaloid skull of Robert Bruce and the ultra-dolichocephaly noticeable in the skull of O’Connell, which contrasts with the mesocephaly of the Irish. The median occipital fossa is noticeable in the skull of Scarpa, while Volta’s skull shows several characteristics which anthropologists consider to belong to the lower races, such as prominence of the styloid apophyses, simplicity of the coronal suture, traces of the median frontal suture, obtuse facial angle (73°), and moreover the remarkable cranial sclerosis, which at places attains a thickness of 16 mm. (five-eighths of an inch). Further mention is made of the submicrocephaly in Descartes, Tissot, Hoffman, Schumann, and others. De Quatrefages noted the greatest degree of macrocephaly in a lunatic, the next in a man of genius. Cranial capacity in men of genius is usually above the average, having been found as high as 1,660 c.c. in Thackeray, 1,830 c.c. in Cuvier, and 2,012 c.c. in Tourgueneff. The capacity is often found above the average in insanity, but numerous exceptions occur in which it drops below the ordinary average, as in the submicrocephalic skulls of Liebig, Döllinger, Hausmann, Gambetta, Dante, and Shelley. From what has just been said, it follows that skull measurements for medico-legal purposes have no more significance than the fact that some men are taller and some shorter than others. The medical jurist should, therefore, not be too dogmatic in drawing conclusions as to race from the skull alone. To complete the diagnosis in the matter of skeletal race peculiarity, the splay foot of the negro with the unusual backward projection of the heel-bone, as well as the greater relative length of the tibia and of the radius, may be taken into consideration. There are other characteristics of the lower jaw and of the facial bones generally, the study of which leads up to the realm of transcendental anatomy; so their further consideration would hardly appeal to the “dispassionate, sympathetic, contemplative jury” of our enlightened countrymen. DETERMINATION OF HEIGHT OR STATURE. When we have the entire skeleton to deal with, the height or stature may be determined with a reasonable degree of certainty by allowing from one to two inches for the soft parts. Most of the proportions given in works on artistic anatomy approach mathematical exactness. For instance, if both upper and lower extremities are extended after the manner of spokes in a wheel, and a point corresponding to the umbilicus be taken as a centre, the circumference of a circle described therefrom should touch the bottom of the feet and the tips of the middle fingers. When the arms are extended horizontally the line included in the middle-finger tips equals the height in the generality of men, although in exceptional cases it may vary. The negro giant, Nelson Pickett, is reported to have been eight feet four inches high, while his outstretched arms measured nine feet from tip to tip. Ordinarily the upper part of the symphysis pubis is the centre of the body. Some anatomists contend that this important point is really below the symphysis in the average man. The length of the foot about equals that of the head. According to Quetelet, its length is just one-ninth of the body in women, a little more than one-ninth in men. The conventional representation of the human foot with a second longer toe is, according to Professor Flower (see “Fashion in Deformity”), of negro origin and does not represent what is most usual in our race and time. Statistics of measurements made in England by several observers on hundreds of barefooted children fail to show one instance in which _the second toe is the longer_.[575] Taken singly the bones may enable an approximate estimate of the height of the person when alive; but it should be remembered in connection with this subject that the height is not a fixed quantity, since it differs according to upright or recumbent position, also before and after a night’s rest. Moreover, the alleged height of the deceased may have been taken in boots and is probably incorrect. Many tables of measurements have been constructed for the purpose of determining the height from the dimensions of the bones; but the relation that exists between the total height and the dimensions of different bones varies according to age, sex, asymmetry, and individual peculiarities, hence the tables will not bear the critical examination that warrants their use with assured correctness, even in a majority of cases. The femur is the bone that gives the best results in these measurements. Isolated fragments have been included in the enumeration; the nose and the middle finger multiplied by 32 and by 19 or 20 giving the approximate height. While the foregoing calculations will not bear scientific scrutiny, they are of sufficient importance to be taken in connection with other facts in determining the probable length of the skeleton. Among the most trustworthy of these tables are those of Dr. Dwight, of Harvard University. DETERMINATION OF AGE. The age is a still more difficult matter to state precisely. Even during life one may be as much as ten years out in guessing the age of an adult, while the error may be from fifteen to twenty years in the case of a corpse. Dr. Tourdes mentions a case where the age was guessed as sixty and sixty-five in a deceased person aged eighty-five. The state of the osseous system and the condition and number of the teeth, which strictly speaking are not bone, are among the surest guides in the determination of age. The signs furnished thereby may vary according to the periods of increase, maturity, and decline. During fœtal life and even at the epoch of birth the bone centres are few. The distal end of the femur, the proximal end of the tibia, and the astragalus are ossified at birth. Points of ossification appear in successive order of development. The exact period at which the bones begin to ossify and the progress of bony union being detailed in standard works on anatomy, it would be superfluous to repeat them here. These changes are, however, not absolutely certain as to time and order, as the tip of the acromion process of the scapula sometimes remains ununited throughout life; the ossification of the sternum and of the costal cartilages is very uncertain, while the teeth, like certain railway trains, are only due when they arrive. From the character of the progress of consolidation of the skeleton the age may be estimated with a reasonable approach to accuracy up to twenty-five or thirty years, which is the stationary period as regards alteration in the osseous system. Above this period it is difficult to arrive at the age. About forty the cranial sutures[576] begin to disappear, although the time of the closure of the sutures varies within large limits; the coccyx becomes consolidated; ossification begins in the thyroid cartilage and in that of the first rib (although this state of the rib is regarded by many as pathological); the lower jaw, which in the fœtus and in infancy formed an obtuse angle, now assumes nearly a right angle. As senility progresses toward decrepitude, the bones become lighter and more brittle, owing to fatty atrophy, and their medullary canal larger; the jaw returns to its infantile shape from loss of teeth and atrophy of the alveolar processes; the bodies of the vertebræ (according to some authorities) bevel off in front; osteophytes are formed, and the neck of the femur approaches the horizontal. (See Abortion and Infanticide.) DETERMINATION OF SEX. In the matter of sex there should be no difficulty, after noting the proof furnished by the aggregate characteristics of both male and female skeletons. The points of contrast between the two skeletons are not so striking before the age of puberty. Generally speaking the cranial capacity of an adult woman is less, although it is contended that since the great majority of males of the human species are taller, heavier, and larger than the females, it follows that if due allowance be made for these variations, it will appear that the brain capacity of woman is relatively very little, if at all, inferior to that of man. The mastoid processes of the female skull are smaller; the lower jaw-bone is relatively smaller and lighter; the ribs are lighter and compressed; the spine is relatively longer; the collar and shoulder bones and the sternum[577] are smaller and lighter; there is a less pronounced angle in the femur, the neck of which approaches a right angle, while smallness of the patella in front and narrowness of the articulating surfaces of the tibia and femur, which in man form the lateral prominences, are said to make the knee-joint in women a sexual characteristic. But it is the striking contrast in the pelvis that furnishes a sexual significance that is of greater value than all the rest of the skeleton together. From a glance at the text-book account of the pelvis, it does not appear that much anatomical knowledge is necessary to identify the important points that give shape to the female pelvis. Its greater diameter (except the vertical), larger and more curved sacrum and coccyx, and great spread of the arch of the pubes are well-nigh incontestible signs. The differences as detailed in the books can be objected to only on the possibility of a so-called hermaphrodite pelvis in one of the other sex. We sometimes see a very large pelvis in a subject who by a teratological freak became a man. Masculine characteristics are, however, oftener found in women than feminine characteristics in men; hence the conclusion that the presence of feminine characteristics leaves but little doubt as to the sex, but that certain masculine indications, while giving a great probability for the male sex, are not absolutely decisive. (See Hermaphroditism.) The finding of fœtal bones around or about the supposed female skeleton is suggestive. It could not be inferred from this fact alone that the woman was or was not pregnant at the time of death, since the absence of fœtal remains on the one hand might imply their entire decomposition in advance of those of the adult; on the other hand, the indiscriminate habit of undertakers, who often bury still-borns with adults, may account for their presence. ACCIDENTAL SIGNS AND EVOLUTION OF THE TEETH. The trade or occupation leaves but few marks on the bones that are useful in the matter of identification. It is in the recent and well-preserved cadaver, or, better still, in the living subject, that the _professional signs_ are of importance. As a rule, the relatively larger scapulæ point to the fact of a day-laborer; necrosis of the lower jaw suggests a worker in phosphorus; worn and discolored teeth a user of tobacco, and aurification of the teeth might suggest the previous social condition. Gold crowns and fillings and dental prosthesis generally are among the most common and, at the same time, among the most useful signs of identification. By this means the bones of persons killed by Indians on the Western plains have been recognized years afterward. The traveller Powell, massacred in Abyssinia, was recognized in this way. From the presence of artificial teeth and the mechanical appliances for fixing them, dentists may recognize their own work beyond a doubt. One of the most common-hackneyed of these cases is that of Professor Webster.[578] Later cases, in which this kind of proof established convincing and conclusive identification, are those of Dr. Cronin, assassinated in Chicago in 1889, and of the bomb-thrower, Norcross. Every now and then accounts appear in the daily press of corpses having been recognized by inspection of the teeth. In Washington, only a short time since, the remains of an unknown man were exhumed from the Potter’s Field for judicial reasons. The unrecognized body had been found in the Potomac in an advanced stage of decomposition. From the signs furnished by the teeth the remains were identified as those of a person who had disappeared mysteriously and under circumstances that pointed to his having been murdered at a Virginian gambling den, and his body thrown into the river. In connection with this subject the Goss-Udderzook tragedy is of instructive interest. In every important case a cast of the mouth should be taken, in order to set at rest any question that may subsequently arise as to the condition of the jaw, the absence of teeth, their irregularity or other dental peculiarities. A cast of the mouth of the deceased in the Hillmon case showed all the teeth to be regular and perfect, while it is alleged that Hillmon’s teeth were just the opposite. External signs furnished by dentition may assist greatly in fixing both age and identity. The evolution of the human dental system has been so well studied from intra-uterine life to old age that we may approximately tell the age, especially of children, from the teeth alone. This sign, so valuable in childhood, loses its value as the dentition progresses. Elaborate tables and dental formulæ to be found elsewhere deal with the two periods of dentition, the relative position and number of the teeth, and the like. At birth the jaws show points of ossification only; but children are sometimes born with central incisors, as the writer has, in common with others, noted in several instances. The _first dentition_ takes place from the seventh to the thirtieth month; the _second_ between four and five years. In rachitic children these periods are later; but a syphilitic taint may hasten their development. The twenty-eight teeth characterize early youth. Wisdom teeth appear between eighteen and twenty-five, sometimes as late as thirty years. The presence of thirty-two teeth indicates maturity. This number is sometimes exceeded. Dr. Tidy, in his work on “Legal Medicine,” reports having seen several children between six and seven years with forty-eight teeth. Instances are recorded of cutting the teeth at advanced age, seventy and one hundred and eighteen years; of adults who have never had teeth; of supernumerary teeth, and of a third dentition. What purported to be a third dentition came under my notice some years ago, in the person of an old negro “voodoo doctor.” A more recent case, said to have occurred in an old man of seventy-four, at Seymour, Ind., is reported in the _Weekly Medical Review_, St. Louis, Mo., April 16th, 1892, p. 314. The pathological signs furnished by the teeth should, of course, be looked upon as a personal characteristic that may lend additional light in the question of identity. CONGENITAL PECULIARITIES, DEFORMITIES, AND INJURIES. But congenital peculiarities or injuries of other parts of the skeleton are studied to greater advantage in determining proof or disproof of identity. We may recognize cranial asymmetry; the peculiar conformation of the idiot skull; the prognathous skull of the negro; the pyramidal skull of some of the yellow races, and the oval head of the white man; besides the ethnic artificial deformities already touched upon in considering the question of race. A metopic cranium, a cleft palate, a deformed spine or pelvis, a larger left scapula—indicative of left-handedness; a shortened extremity; bowed legs, club foot, the presence of extra fingers or toes, and the relative length of the fingers are each and all valuable facts in judiciary anthropology. In women of Spanish extraction the fifth finger is almost as long as the fourth—a fact so well known that glove-makers take advantage of it in sending gloves to Mexico, the Antilles, or to South America. An estimate of the length of the hand seems to be a matter of difficulty, notwithstanding the extensive observation of high authority. In the majority of cases the ring-finger is longer than the index. Important evidence is furnished from the existence of _injuries_ such as fractures, whether old or recent; the marks of gunshot wounds, of trephining, amputation, excision, or other surgical operation on the bones. The remains of an old, ununited fracture in his left humerus enabled Sir William Fergusson to verify and settle all doubt as to the identity of the body of the great missionary and explorer, Dr. Livingston.[579] The existence of an injury may constitute evidence of great importance to the accused, as happened in the case of an English gentleman charged with murder, where the trial turned on the deposit of callus in a broken rib, the only bone produced in court. From the state of this callus there could be no doubt that the fracture must have been produced about eight or ten days before death, and could not have belonged to the deceased. There was, therefore, complete failure of the identity, and the accused was discharged.[580] On the other hand, circumstances may arise in which the existence or not of an injury is a fact of great importance to the prosecution. Among other specimens in the Army Medical Museum at Washington, the bones of the forearm of Wirtz, executed for inhuman treatment of prisoners during the Civil War, show no remains or trace of fracture; yet it was claimed in defence at the trial that he could not have been guilty of the atrocities attributed to him, for the reason that this arm was disabled from a fracture. _Disease of the bones_, whether hereditary or acquired, is an essential descriptive element in reconstituting individuality. Caries and necrosis, rickets, spinal disease, ankylosis, and other external manifestations of bone lesion may furnish pointers of such value as often to be incontestible. They are so evident as not to require detailed mention; but much care in such cases is necessary to distinguish between disease, decay, and violence, and artefacta. The last may have resulted from the axe or spade of the grave-digger or from post-mortem lesions made at the necropsy, as in the remains of the notorious Beau Hickman of Washington, whose body on being exhumed showed that sundry amputations and reamputations had been made on the principal limbs. Having died in a public hospital, the cadaver had been utilized in rehearsal of these operations previous to its burial in the Potter’s Field. Injuries of the phalanges, known as “baseball fingers,” are valuable indications. This was one of the facts of identification in the celebrated Cronin case. DURATION OF BURIAL. The condition of the exhumed bones may throw some light on the question as to the probable length of time they have been under ground, as well as the probable cause of death. If the bones were entirely denuded of soft parts we should hardly expect them to be those of a corpse buried only three or four months previously. The noting of such an injury as a fracture inflicted by some sharp instrument on a skull found in a cesspool was sufficient, with other evidence of a general character, to convict a prisoner tried at the Derby Lent Assizes in 1847. In all cases of the kind under consideration, special attention should be paid to the surroundings, every little detail of which should be noted with the utmost accuracy; for such articles as clothes, jewelry, buttons, and in fact anything that may furnish an inference,[581] may not only throw light on the identity of the person, but otherwise assist justice. Cases are recorded in which the identity has been established principally by the clothing found with the skeleton. In Taylor’s “Medical Jurisprudence” a case is mentioned where the skeleton, portions of clothes, buttons, and boots of a Cornish miner were identified after twenty-six years’ submersion in water. Somewhat similar circumstances, a few years ago, enabled the arctic explorer, Lieutenant Schwatka, and others to identify the remains of Lieutenant Irving, of the ill-fated Franklin party. In exceptional circumstances, as that of great cold, for instance, organic remains may be preserved indefinitely. Visitors to the Junior United Service Club in London may remember the mammoth bones discovered in digging the foundation of the club-house. Accounts of remarkable preservation of bodies discovered a long time after the occurrence of Alpine accidents, and the finding of well-preserved mammoth remains in the Siberian ice, are matters of common knowledge. A few years since, in assisting to take the remains of a mammoth from an ice cliff in Escholtz Bay, Alaska, I came across the skull of a musk-ox and the rib of a reindeer which showed the deformity and callus of a united fracture, yet there are geological reasons for believing that thousands of years must have elapsed since these remains were entombed in the ice. A precaution to be taken in judicial investigation of bones is to ascertain whether they belong to more than one body, as they may have been put together with a view to deceive. Each bone should be examined separately, to ascertain whether it is a right or left bone or belongs to the same skeleton. They should be put together with intelligence and care, and if incomplete parts of a skeleton they may be laid in sand or putty and photographed, or the medical man may go further and, Agassiz-like, reconstruct the skeleton from the fragments. In the case of a fracture the bones should be sawn longitudinally in order to study the callus. THE HAIR AND NAILS. Since the hair and nails resist decomposition an unusually long time, and are even believed to grow after somatic death, they may be considered as accessories of such value in the question that occupies us as to make it possible to verify certain characteristics regarding the remains of the cadaver even after years of inhumation. For instance, hypertrophy of the great toe-nail, the length and color of the hair, baldness, or a long beard might furnish evidence of the best kind. Both hair and nails may, however, change after death. A case is mentioned[582] in which the hair changed from a dark brown to red after twenty years of burial. Accredited cases of the growth of hair after death are also on record. Dr. Caldwell, of Iowa, states that he was present in 1862 at the exhumation of a body which had been buried for four years. He found that the coffin had given at the joints and that the hair protruded through the openings. He had evidence to show that the deceased was shaved before burial, nevertheless the hair of the head measured eighteen inches, the whiskers eight inches, and the hair of the breast four to six inches.[583] Quite recently in unearthing the remains of an old cemetery in Washington, D. C., a number of persons noticed that when the body of a young girl, supposed to be about twelve or thirteen years of age, was taken up it was found that her hair had grown until it extended from her crown to her feet. Many careful observations seem to prove the molecular life of the hair and nails after somatic death. It suffices to quote the well-known case mentioned in Ogston’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” of several medical students who were brought to trial for having in custody the dead body of an idiot boy. When found on the dissecting-table the body was so disfigured that there was only one means left of proving its identity. The boy had a whim during life of permitting his nails to grow, and had not allowed them to be cut for many years previous to his death. They had completely curled round the tips of his fingers and toes till they had thus come to extend along the palmar and plantar surfaces in a strange way. The counsel for the prosecution availed himself of the knowledge of this fact, and his proof seemed to be complete, when a medical man came forward and gave in evidence that it was not an unusual circumstance for the nails to grow for several inches after death. This astounding statement so nonplussed the judge that the case was allowed to drop as not proven. In exceptional cases the hair may be _green_. I saw a case some years since, for which no cause could be assigned, and only a few days ago I saw another in a man who worked in a brass-foundry. At the Cronin trial a barber, who had counted the victim among his customers, recognized the shape of the head and texture of the hair. Subsequent evidence of medical experts was conclusive as to the identity of hair found clinging to a trunk, the hair cut from the head of the murdered man, and that of a single hair discovered on a cake of soap. This single strand, being lighter in color in some portions than in others, seemed to indicate that it could not have come from the head of the deceased, whose hair was brown. But it was shown that hair placed on soap or other alkaline substances becomes bleached in a manner similar to the color of a single thread. This evidence of vital importance linked the hair found in the trunk with that cut from Dr. Cronin’s head, and went far toward proving that one of the murderers had washed his hands with the soap after the deed had been done. Reviewing the signs furnished by the osseous system, it will be seen that the study of the skeleton alone is beyond contradiction more satisfactory and more important in establishing identity than that of all the other organs. Consequently a correct interpretation of the facts observed and judicious application of the rules deducible therefrom may in the matter of a human skeleton put its identity beyond a reasonable doubt. But the expert should remember that as no two cases are just alike, unexpected questions and unforeseen features may present themselves, giving to each case merits of its own. At best the medical man’s conclusions will be probabilities, not certainties; therefore his expressions of opinion should be the more guarded, as upon it may hang the life of an innocent man. IDENTIFICATION OF MUTILATED REMAINS. Many of the foregoing remarks on the identity of the skeleton apply in cases where mutilated remains or a portion only of the body has been recovered. Circumstances often occur in which bodies may require identification after having been drowned and partly eaten by fishes or crabs, or after having been partly eaten by buzzards, or torn into fragments by animals, as has happened in the remains of a dead infant partly devoured by a dog, and in the case of a farmer who died in the woods and was subsequently eaten by his own hogs. After accidents and fires where many persons perish; after a railway disaster where bodies have been mangled, drowned, burnt, and frozen, all in the same accident; or after an explosion from steam or gas or in a mine, or from gunpowder, dynamite, or other substance, the human remains are generally in such a state as to defy all attempts at recognition. To dispose of a dead body in order to avoid detection, criminals will mutilate, disfigure, and chop into fragments the remains, which they afterward place in a trunk, a wardrobe, or throw into a sewer or other hiding-place. Scarcely a year passes that judiciary medicine is not concerned with cases of the kind. The frequency of such crimes has been attributed by some to the so-called contagion of murder; others offer the simple law of the series in explanation; others still believe that imitation is the principal cause. While there is no doubt a grain of truth in each of these, less philosophic minds will look upon such a beastly proceeding as a mark of the complete satisfaction sought by the destructive instinct. Why such things should be is of less concern than the fact that criminal mutilation of the dead body is not confined to any age or country. Though more frequent in the last fifteen years, it takes up quite a space in the history of human cruelty. The violent passion, wrath, and vengeance that caused the prophet Isaiah to be sawn in two at the age of one hundred years by order of Manasses and Agag cut into pieces by Samuel have not materially changed in the days of Jack the Ripper; and we find such crimes in antipodal parts of the world, among varied sociological conditions, no matter whether it be the North American Indian, who scalps and mutilates his enemy and places the severed penis in the mouth, or the civilized European, who cuts up the body of his victim and serves it in a curry at a feast of assembled friends.[584] This new point of judiciary medicine has lately been elaborated by European writers under the title of _Dépeçage Criminel_, a term which applies to the operation resorted to by an assassin having for its end the getting rid of the body of the victim and to render more difficult the establishment of its identity. The cleverness of experts scarcely keeps pace nowadays with the more complicated proceedings adopted by criminals. In fact, at a trial of this kind truth and science are often the under dogs in a fight, than which none in forensic medicine is longer and more embarrassing. To cause a rapid disappearance of the proofs of a homicide, with a view to escape the investigations of justice, murderers have been known literally to make hash of the victim which was subsequently eaten by themselves and others. Gruner relates the case of a man who, having killed and cut into pieces his victim, boiled and roasted the fragments and ate them with his wife. Such examples, however, suggest morbid rather than passional phenomena, which manifestly call for rigid scrutiny into the mental state of the culprit, who may be more of a lunatic than a malefactor. In cases of infanticide new-born children are sometimes cut into pieces and the fragments burnt in order to facilitate the disappearance of the cadaver. There does not appear to be, however, any well-authenticated instance of the operation having been done on a living child. Generally the dismemberment is done in order to cause more ready disappearance of the remains. The medico-legal problem to be solved in cases of criminal mutilation is to establish the identity of the victim and that of the author of the crime. Many apparently trivial circumstances may assist in the formation of an opinion as to the identity of the culprit. If the victim be an adult, a man is the author of the deed; if an infant, a woman, the mother, is almost always the guilty one. The London _Lancet_ (May 30th, 1863, p. 617) reports a case in which the body of a child, of apparently four to six months, was found in the sewage of a water-closet, minus an arm cut off below the shoulder, presumably that a vaccination-mark might not be adduced as evidence. A young woman was suspected. Several women deposed having seen a dusky-brown mother’s mark near the child’s navel. After steeping in pure water a portion of the skin said to include the mark, and after washing, the mark gradually reappeared at the end of three days, perfectly distinct. It was recognized by witnesses and produced at the trial as corroborative evidence. The accused was found guilty. In a case of infanticide at Tarare, in 1884, the upper extremity of a fœtus was found to have been disarticulated after the manner of carving the wing of a fowl. This having suggested to Dr. Lacassagne a cook as the author of the crime, she was speedily discovered and convicted. A few years later an analogous case occurred in Florence and was reported by Dr. A. Montalti. The instrument used for mutilating the body may furnish a suggestion of identity, to be dispelled or affirmed upon further investigation. The mode of section observed in various instances has led to the recognition of a butcher as the culprit. An expert would have but little trouble in distinguishing the hacking and mangling of a body from the careful cutting and preservation of muscles and blood-vessels in dissections made by medical students, whom the public, by the way, invariably suspect in cases of mutilation. If it can be ascertained that the instrument used was operated either by a left-handed person or by an ambidexter, such a fact may prove of importance. Sometimes the fragments are tied or sewn up in a package. The manner in which the knot is tied may indicate the occupation of the culprit. In one case the regularity of the sewing revealed that it was the work of a woman. Examination of the remains of clothing and of neighboring objects where the crime was committed may result in the identification of the victim or of the murderer. Indeed, it is the careful noting of trivial facts and their combination that is so valuable in all investigations of this class. A compound fact made up of minor facts, which considered severally would possess but little value, may sometimes solve the puzzle in a case where no single fact of conclusive value is obtainable. Having collected as much of the mutilated remains as possible, the first step toward identification is to replace the pieces in anatomical order, to note carefully their correspondence or otherwise, and to ascertain whether the fragments belong to the same body or to two or several individuals. This is often a delicate and difficult matter, especially where decomposition is advanced or where the horror has been pushed to its utmost limits, as in the case of a fratricide committed in France by several persons, who fragmented the cadaver with a saw and hatchet; boiled the remains and fed them to hogs; and, after crushing the bones with a hammer, threw the fragments into a deep gorge. Again, the body may be divided into numerous pieces, a hundred or more, and disposed of in widely different localities, as in a pond, a manure-heap, a river, or a cesspool. The chopped-up remains of infants have been boiled in lye and afterward thrown into a privy or put in a barrel of vinegar. A mother has also been known to cook with cabbage the dismembered remains of her six-months’ child and serve it at a meal of which both she and her husband partook. Numerous counterparts of such cases happening in late years could be cited where the object was to favor the disappearance of the cadaver, and in which the establishment of the identity turned on the examination of some small part of the organism; the uterus, the spermatic cord, the lobe of the ear, the hair, or the teeth furnishing a positive demonstration that led to judiciary results. PUTREFACTION goes on very fast in a corpse that has been mutilated; but it is slower in parts which, on being separated just after death, have become bloodless in consequence of the hemorrhage. After submersion the outward signs of putrefaction put a notable obstacle in the way of identification, and after drowning the body becomes rapidly unrecognizable. Supposing it impossible to reconstitute the cadaver in all its essential parts, it is always possible, by following the instructions already given for examining the skeleton, to infer from one or several parts of the cadaver the sex, age, height, and sometimes pathological peculiarities of the victim. Examination of the skeleton and teeth is of capital importance in an investigation of this class. The indications furnished thereby having already been touched upon, and being about all that we are justified in saying, it is only necessary to repeat that many of the details relative to these special indications are so confusing as to suggest caution in using the statistical tables of even high authority, as the observations they rest on are not of sufficient extent to deserve confidence. A survey of the head, limbs, trunk, and genital parts will give the most useful indications. The HEAD, in fact, is the surest index for justice, and one that lends promptness in the discovery of the assassin. Typical illustrations of this occur in the Goss-Udderzook case and in the recent example of the bomb-thrower, Norcross. In the case of a woman murdered by her husband at Antwerp in 1877 and cut into one hundred and fifty-three pieces and her remains thrown into a privy, the color of the hair, the lobule of a torn ear, and the uterus of a woman having had children furnished special signs that led to identity and condemnation. Examination of the _brain_ and its membranes, though furnishing no very notable characteristics in the matter of identification, may nevertheless be regarded as a natural corollary to that of the skull. Brain weight, which is greatest between thirty and forty years, 1,200 to 1,450 grams in man, 1,100 to 1,500 in woman, diminishes toward the sixtieth year. It is said that the diminution takes place a few years sooner in the opposite sex. The estimated loss of weight in a person of eighty years is admitted to be from 90 to 150 grams. Another sign of age is the tendency to degeneration found in the pineal gland, the cortical substance, the optic and striate thalami, and in the brain capillaries. The state of the eyes, if not too decomposed, may still become a sign of identity. For instance, the color of the iris, an arcus senilis, a pterygium, a cataract or an operation for the same, an iridectomy, etc., are signs that occasion may utilize. The TRUNK may show, as it has in several instances, incised wounds that caused death before the mutilation. Besides, the organs therein contained may by their weight, dimension, and tissue alteration indicate the progress of age and of degeneration. Modifications of the circulatory and respiratory apparatus are obviously characteristic. As age advances the only organ whose weight increases with the number of years, the heart, may become hypertrophied or dilated; its coronary arteries may undergo an alteration; the pericardium thickens, and in fact arterial atheroma and degeneration generally may begin between thirty-five and forty years. It should, however, be borne in mind that these signs of senility may come much later or even not at all. In a man of eighty-four years Tourdes found no notable tissue lesion; in another of one hundred and four Lobstein found no trace of ossification of the arteries of the trunk and upper extremities, and in Thomas Parr, aged one hundred and fifty-two years, Harvey found absolutely no lesion of this kind. Although toward eighty years the heart increases in weight in both sexes, the opposite has been observed in exceptional cases. Placing the average weight of this organ in the adult at 266 grams for men, 220 for women, it will be found that progress in weight gives toward the eightieth year an increase of 90 grams for men and 60 for women. Yet a case of cardiac atrophy is reported in a woman of eighty whose heart weighed but 170 grams. Diminished weight of the lungs becomes accentuated with years. Especially is this the case after pseudo-melanosis and senile emphysema. The state of the lungs of stone-cutters and miners and various thoracic and abdominal diseases may likewise become signs of identity. A cirrhosed liver, an enlarged spleen, a senile kidney, and the like, are sufficiently obvious in their bearings on this question. Like the trunk, the ARMS AND LEGS, in cases of the class under consideration, show but few traces of disfigurement other than the fact of their having been disjointed. The manner in which the sections were made and the proceedings employed for the disarticulation would equally affirm an experienced hand or the reverse. Such facts have of late years assisted in the discovery and condemnation both of a farmer and of a medical student, and also in the case of the cook already mentioned, who cut off her child’s arm after the manner of carving the wing of a fowl. The existence of deformity, injury, and disease in the limbs should, of course, claim attention, but their relativity in an investigation of the kind is too apparent to require further comment. Mutilation of the GENITAL ORGANS is not so common. Persons familiar with border warfare have observed the savage custom of cutting off the victim’s penis and placing it in his mouth. In more civilized communities the culprits are generally women in whom hatred and ferocity prompt an act that marks the evident satisfaction sought by the destructive instinct. Sometimes, however, the genital organs have been cut from the cadaver of a woman, presumably for the purpose of concealing traces of rape that may have preceded the murder. The signs furnished by the female genital organs as to virginity, maternity, and the menopause are so easily demonstrated at the necropsy as to become positive proofs of identity. The uterus loses both in size and weight with age. This along with hard, atrophied, and germless ovaries attests the stoppage of menstruation. The question of identity may turn on the age at which menstruation ceases, as happened in an action of ejectment in the case of Doe on the demise of Clark _vs._ Tatom. The period known as change of life, when the uterus and ovaries lose their function, though placed at forty-five and fifty years, is quite uncertain. In spite of _averages_, menstruation is occasionally continued to seventy and upward.[585] The signs furnished by the genital organs of the male are of less importance. Atrophy and diminished weight of the testicles and rarity or absence of the spermatozoids are indications of senility; although spermatozoids have been observed at ninety-four years. The structure of the spermatic cord at different periods of life from the last of intra-uterine to the first of extra-uterine life, in puberty, and in old age, is accompanied by characteristic modifications of development and regression, which are of interest on the question of medico-forensic diagnosis of identity, as shown by Dr. Pellacani.[586] Congenital deformity of the genital parts, as epispadias or hypospadias; marks of circumcision, useful in India to identify Mussulmans above eleven years; traces of disease that may have left extensive cicatrices, as phagadenic chancre, suppurating buboes, etc., may also furnish characteristics of evidential value. ENTIRE CADAVER DEAD BUT A SHORT TIME. In the case of a body that has been dead a short time only, recognition from the features, even by the nearest relatives, is often a matter of the greatest difficulty. The change produced in the color and form of the body, especially after drowning, is a formidable obstacle to identification by likeness and general type of face. Pages could be filled with the mere mention of the multiplied instances of mistaken identity of the living, many of whom have been punished because they had the misfortune to resemble some one else. How much more careful, then, should be the medical examination of the remains in the progress of decay, with the distortion and discoloration of the features, and the consequent change or destruction of the peculiar expression of the countenance by which human features are usually distinguished and identified. Among the innumerable instances of mistaken personal identity and cases of resemblance mentioned in history and fable, from the time of Ulysses down to the days of Rip Van Winkle’s dog Schneider, it appears that this animal is credited with more sagacity than man in the matter of recognizing his master even after years of absence. Indeed, recognition by animals may be considered a proof of identity. Many persons can recall instances of the kind, though perhaps not so dramatic as the one of the dog in the Odyssey, who recognized his master after twenty years of absence and died immediately thereafter. As a matter of fact, time and circumstances will so alter resemblance as to account for some of these most striking proofs of the fallibility of human testimony that we see illustrated in chapters on mistaken identity. We easily forget the true image of persons and things, and time promptly modifies them. The evidence of the senses may be so little trusted in this regard that father, mother, husband, and nurse may attest a false identity in the case of their own children. A nurse has been known to testify to the identity of the severed head of a woman whom thirteen other persons were sure they recognized from characteristic signs, when the supposed victim put in an appearance and thus attested her own existence. The head of the unrecognized victim of this strange controversy is preserved in the museum of the Strassburg Faculty. In another case of historical notoriety in France, forty witnesses on each side swore to the personality; while in the celebrated Tichbourne trial no less than eighty-five witnesses maintained positively, under the most rigid and scrutinizing cross-examination, that a certain person was Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichbourne, a baronet; at the same time a corresponding number were equally unshaken in their conviction that he was a Wapping butcher, Arthur Orton. Resemblances often bring about remarkable coincidences. A case is said to have occurred in Covington, Ky., where two men met, each the double of the other in form, stature, and feature, each having lost a right leg, amputated at the knee, and each being blind in the left eye from accident. Puzzle and perplexity are not confined to remarkable cases and judicial errors; for so many people are unskilled in correct observation that it is a matter of common occurrence for two individuals to be mistaken the one for the other. The writer for some years has frequently been mistaken for a certain naval officer he is said to resemble, while the officer in question has become so accustomed to being called “Doctor” that he answers to the title without protest. A case that has of late been much quoted in the journals is that of Tiggs. What was supposed to be his mangled body was identified by his wife, and further identification was forthcoming from one of his children and the employer of the deceased. The coroner had granted a certificate for burial, and as the hearse neared the door, to the surprise of all parties the real Tiggs entered the house and gave a satisfactory account of his absence. Most mistakes of this kind are the result of existing imperfections in the average human mind or in its use. So few people are skilled in minute observation that Lord Mansfield’s dictum regarding the “likeness as an argument of a child being the son of a parent” should be received with a certain degree of reserve, especially in the question of identity from likeness after death. In Ogston’s “Medical Jurisprudence” a case is related of a father who could not recognize the body of his son drowned at sea ten days previously. The mother, however, identified her boy from the existence of two pimple-looking projections on the front of the chest, which proved to be supplementary mammæ. As a rule, the changes in the face and countenance two weeks after death are such that it is well-nigh impossible to establish identity from the features alone. Yet in exceptional cases the external results of putrefactive decomposition have been so delayed or modified as to produce very small changes in the features even after many years of burial. Bodies have been known to retain a remarkable state of preservation for long periods in such circumstances as burial in a peat bog, in the sand of the desert, and in the frozen ground of cold countries. Even _photography_ in the matter of identity is not to be trusted. Though an important accessory to other evidence, it is often, and very properly, objected to by lawyers on the ground of being incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. The picture presented for comparison may not be an original one or it may have been taken years previously. The difficulty in recognizing one’s own most intimate friends from pictures taken only a few years back is a matter of common knowledge. Besides, the negative from which the picture was taken may have been retouched or altered, consequently it would not be the same as produced by the camera, and is, therefore, valueless as evidence. It is held to be incompetent to prove a photograph by merely asking a witness whether or not he recognizes the picture in question as that of a certain person. In all cases where photographic pictures are required in a court of law the authorities are that the artist who took the picture must be produced and show that he took the picture, and that it is a correct representation of the original of which it claims to be a picture. If possible the negatives themselves should be called for and reproduced. Dr. Tidy states that he has known a volume of smoke appear in a print as issuing from a chimney, and used as evidence of the existence of a nuisance, when no smoke existed in the original negative. Only slight familiarity with the method of taking photographic pictures and the chemistry involved in the process suffices to show that many little details of sensitizing, exposing, developing, and printing greatly change the general appearance of the face. Some of the tricks that may be played with photography, illustrating its comparative incompetency as evidence in the matter of personal identification, I have seen in a series of pictures at the Department of Justice in Washington. All were photographs of the same person taken in such varying circumstances that no two are alike or recognizable as the same person, until scrutiny is brought to bear on the profile of the nose.[587] In considering photography in its bearing on this branch of medicine, it must also be borne in mind that a certain degree of imperfection arises from want of uniformity in the lenses of cameras. I have already mentioned the want of precision in photographing the skull, the common defect being central not orthogonal projection such as anthropometry requires. SURFACE SIGNS OF IDENTITY. Examination of the surface of the skin and of its appendages may in certain cases take decisive importance. Valuable medical proof is often furnished by scars, nævi, growths on the skin, pock-marks, traces of skin disease or of scrofula, and by the so-called professional stigmata which would suggest the trade, character of work, or occupation of the deceased. Thus cigarette-stains on the fingers of smokers, or silver-stains on the hands of photographers, the horny palm of the laborer, or the soft, delicate hand of one not accustomed to work, would be indicative. The alterations in the hand make it, so to speak, the seat of election; for in the majority of trades that may be mentioned it is the hand alone that bears the principal marks of daily work that indicate the calling. A case is recorded of a person who previously to his assassination was lame and walked with a crutch. Although the body was cut into fragments, an examination revealed in the palm of the hands characteristic callosities, showing prolonged use of support of this kind. In another instance of criminal mutilation a tattoo-mark found on the arm proved an overwhelming charge against the assassin and drew forth his confession. An accused was also convicted of murder after establishing the only missing link, the question of identity, which turned on the finding of cupping-marks and a tattoo on the body of the murdered man. Personal identity of the bodies of infants has, moreover, been proved by means of a small blister; by a patch of downy hair; by the similarity existing between two pieces of thread used to tie the umbilical cord; and by the severed end of that part of the funis attached to the infant fitting precisely to the corresponding portion attached to the after-birth. In addition to these a methodical examination may put in evidence other facts that may be derived from diverse influences that leave characteristic traces. SIGNS FURNISHED BY MARKS, SCARS, STAINS, ETC., ON THE SKIN. But of all the surface signs, whether congenital or acquired, that may throw light on the antecedents of the decedent, birth-marks, freckles, cicatrices, tattooes, and the professional signs furnish the best indications. Birth-marks (_nævi materni_), from their supposed indelibility, have given rise to discussion at many celebrated trials. As a rule, these marks are permanent and seldom lose their distinctness, though in exceptional cases they may undergo atrophy in the first years of life. Hence testimony as to the existence of birth-marks may often be uncertain when it has reference to a period a long way back. In a recorded case of supposed recognition of a person having a mark of this kind on her face, the alleged victim turned up and established her identity as well as the fact that she did not have the birth-mark attributed to her. Before the introduction of the electrolytic method it was customary to resort to cauterization, excision, vaccination, and tattooing the pigmentary spot in order to modify or remove these congenital marks. Such proceedings usually left more or less of an indelible scar which occasion might utilize in the matter of medico-legal diagnosis. The traces of nævi may, however, be entirely removed by electrolysis. I have recently seen a nævus of large dimension on the face of a young woman so completely destroyed as to leave no trace of the operation. The _possibility of the disappearance of a scar_ in such circumstances depends here, as it does in other instances, on the depth of the wound. A cicatrix being the result of a solution of continuity in the derma, the question arises whether a wound that has divided the derma without loss of substance and healed by first intention leaves any perceptible scar. Some are of the opinion that a cicatricial line persists, but grows fainter with time. Histological examination in a question of this kind might prove conclusive by showing the structure of the fibrocellular tissue that constitutes the cicatrix. In the case of very superficial burns or wounds, the scar may completely disappear if the epidermis alone or the superficial part of the derma is attacked; on the other hand, if there has been long suppuration or loss of substance from ulcers, chancres, or buboes, especially on the neck, groins, legs, or genital parts, traces of their lesion will be found. It may, therefore, be asserted as a general rule that all scars resulting from wounds and from skin diseases which involve any loss of substance are _indelible_. A scar on the face is one of the points at issue in the celebrated Hillmon case already mentioned. As the matter of cicatrices is treated in the section on WOUNDS, further mention here would be superfluous. TATTOOING. Of all the scars that speak, none in judiciary medicine affords better signs of identity by their permanency and durable character and the difficulty of causing their disappearance than those furnished by tattoo-marks. The custom of tattooing having existed from the earliest historical epochs is of interest not only from an ethnological but from a medical and pathological point of view, while it is of great importance in its relation to medical jurisprudence in cases of contested personal identification which may be either established or refuted by this sign. So trustworthy is it in many instances as to become a veritable ideograph that may indicate the personal antecedents, vocation, social state, certain events of one’s life, and even their date. Without going into the history of a subject mentioned by Hippocrates, Plato, Cæsar, and Cicero, it may be pertinent to say that tattooing is prohibited by the Bible (Leviticus xix., 28) and is condemned by the Fathers of the Church, Tertullian among others, who gives the following rather singular reason for interdicting its use among women: “_Certum sumus Spiritum Sanctum magis masculis tale aliquid subscribere potuisse si feminis subscripsisset._” (_De Virginibus_ velandis. Lutetiæ Parisorum, 1675, fº, p. 178.) In addition to much that has been written by French, German,[588] and Italian authors, who have put tattooing in an important place in legal medicine, the matter of tattoo-marks a few years since claimed the attention of the law courts of England, the Chief Justice, Cockburn, in the Tichbourne case, having described this species of evidence as of “vital importance,” and in itself final and conclusive. This celebrated trial has brought to light about all the knowledge that can be used in the investigation of this sign as a mark of identity. Absence of the tattoo-marks in this case justified the jury in their finding that the defendant was not and could not be Roger Tichbourne, whereupon the alleged claimant was proved to be an impostor, found guilty of perjury, and sentenced to penal servitude.[589] The practice of tattooing is found pretty much over the world, notably in the Polynesian Islands and in some parts of Japan. It is, however, not found in Russia, being contrary to the superstitions of the people, who regard a mark of this kind as an alliance or contract with evil spirits. Its use appears to be penal only, and is limited to Siberian convicts. The degrading habit, confined to a low order of development, exists at the present time as a survival of a superstitious practice of paganism, probably owing to perversion of the sexual instinct, and is still common among school-boys, sailors, soldiers, criminals, and the lowest order of prostitutes living in so-called civilized communities. Indeed, unanimity of opinion among medical and anthropological writers assigns erotic passion as the most frequent cause of tattooing, and shows the constant connection between tattoo-marks and crime. Penal statistics show the greater number of tattooed criminals among the lowest order, as those who have committed crimes against the person; while the fewest are found among swindlers and forgers, the most intelligent class of criminals. Even amid intellectual advancement and æsthetic sensibility far in advance of the primitive man, such as exists in London and New York, for instance, are to be found persons who make good incomes by catering to this depraved taste for savage ornamentation. Persons who have been to Jerusalem may remember the tattooers, who try to induce travellers to have a cross tattooed on the arm as a souvenir of the pilgrimage. If a writer in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 15th June, 1881, is to be believed, it appears that the Prince of Wales on his journey to the Holy Land had a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his arm, April 2d, 1862. The “Cruise of the _Bacchante_” also tells how the Duke of York was tattooed while in Japan. The process is now rapidly done, an Edison electric pen being utilized for the purpose, and some of the wretched martyrs have the hardihood to be tattooed from head to foot with grotesque designs in several colors. I know of several instances: one of a man in Providence, R. I.; another of a Portuguese barber, who has striped poles, razors, brushes, and other emblems of his calling over the entire body. Another man has likenesses of Abe Lincoln and of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany on his respective shins. A Nova Scotian, tattooed from head to foot, has among other designs that of “St. George and the Dragon” on his back; while a Texas ranchman, six feet two inches tall, underwent the torture of eight weeks’ profanation of his body in order to appear in blue, brown, and red, with an irreverent image on his back of the Immaculate Conception and thirty-one angels.[590] A singular mixture of erotic and religious emblems is often found among the varied and fantastic signs used in tattooing. I recall the case of a man who had represented on his back a fox-hunt, in which riders followed the hounds in full pursuit of a fox about to take cover in the anus. In another case of a man accused of criminal attempt on two little girls, examination of the sexual organs revealed a tattoo on the back of the penis representing the devil with horns and red cheeks and lips. When the little girls were asked if the accused had shown them his virile member, they answered, “This man unbuttoned himself and said to us: ‘I am going to make you see the devil.’” In the face of such affirmations, the accused confessed his crime and was condemned. Other tattoo signs of the grossest emblems of unnatural passion have been found among low prostitutes, pederasts, and tribades. Statistics founded on numerous facts show many cases of tattooing of the penis and even of the labia majora in the lowest order of prostitutes, but these unclean images and revelations of lustful instinct do not occur in the same order of frequency as those noted on the forearm, the deltoid, or the inferior extremities. So valuable are these marks in their bearing on the class, vocation, character, and tastes of a person that the finding of anchors and ships would indicate a sailor; while flags, sabres, cannon, and other warlike signs would indicate a soldier, etc. It is also noticeable that in the tattooing practised by lunatics the image relates in some way to the nature of the peculiar form of mental disease from which they suffer, and it is chiefly among the more severe and incurable cases of mental degeneration that these signs are found. (See Dr. Riva’s article, “Il tatuaggio nel Manicomio d’Ancona,” _Cronica del Manicomio d’Ancona_, November, 1888.) Almost always the motive that prompts these disfigurements of the skin is the result of impulse, of thoughtlessness, or of orgy, and almost all the tattooed come to repent of their folly. The subject of _détatouage_ has of late taken a polemic turn in some of the Continental journals. There are besides many cases on record of severe accidents and complications following the operation, such as severe inflammation, erysipelas, abscess, and gangrene. Dr. Beuchon gives statistics of forty-seven cases, in which four were followed by mutilation and eight by death either directly or in consequence of an amputation. A certain proportion of what is known as _syphilis insontium_ is to be found among the reported statistics of tattooing. Dr. Bispham, of Philadelphia, informs me that while at Blockley Hospital he saw thirty cases of syphilis that had been communicated by the same tattooer. Tattooing may sometimes be _accidental_. I have seen a departmental clerk with an elongated tattoo on the back of his hand caused by accidental wounding with an inked pen. A bursting shell during a naval engagement has caused a characteristic tattoo on the face of a well-known officer to be seen any day in Washington. Two cases of the bluish-black discoloration of the skin from taking nitrate of silver have also come under my observation. Both occurred in medical men, one of whom lives in Florida, the other in the District of Columbia. Silver discolorations of this kind are indelible, but I learn from one of these gentlemen that large doses of iodide of potassium cause temporary fading of the discoloration, which returns on stopping the medicine.[591] The _indelibility of tattoo-marks_ is such that their traces may be easily recognized in the cadaver, though in a somewhat advanced stage of putrefaction. They have even been recognized on a gangrenous limb. Sometimes, however, it is impossible to recognize at first sight whether there has or has not been a tattoo. A strong light and a magnifying glass and a microscopic examination of the neighboring ganglia to detect the presence of coloring matter may assist in removing doubt. It has been found on the bodies of tattooed cadavers that the ganglia are filled with grains of coloring matter of the same nature as that employed in making the tattoo. Attempts to remove tattoo-marks generally leave a vicious scar that is equally indelible. An efficacious method is to tattoo the mark with a solution of tannin, which is followed by brushing over with nitrate of silver. A red cicatrix follows, and when the epidermis separates the tattoo disappears. A better method, however, is by means of the electric needle already mentioned in speaking of the electrolysis of nævi. That _a tattoo-mark may disappear_ by the effects of time and leave no trace is a matter that Cooper reports after examining the mutilated remains of a cadaver, and the statistics of Caspar, Tardieu, and Hutin place it as high as nine in the hundred. An officer of the United States Revenue Marine lately called my attention to several superficial tattooes on the back of his hand which had disappeared. The deeper ones, however, remained. The _spontaneous disappearance of a tattoo_ seems to be possible when the operation has been done in such a superficial way as not to have passed the rete Malpighii, or when the tattooing has been done with some substance not very tenacious, as vermilion, which appears to be easily eliminated. But when the particles of coloring matter penetrate into the fibro-elastic tissue of the derma, the disappearance of the tattoo is rare. In seventy-eight individuals tattooed with vermilion alone, Hutin found eleven upon whom the tattoo had disappeared. Out of one hundred and four tattooes made with a single color, India-ink, writing ink, blue or back, not a single one had completely disappeared. The results are identical if the tattooes are made with two colors. Thus in 153 tattooes with vermilion and India-ink, one instance showed a fading of the black, in another it had completely disappeared, the red being well marked; twenty times the red was partly effaced, the black being well marked; and in sixteen cases the red had completely disappeared, the black remaining visible.[592] A tattoo-mark may sometimes be altered, in which case it proves deceptive as an index. A workman changing his trade seeks to transform the insignia of his first calling into those of the second, or a criminal in order to avoid identity will make a change. In the former instance the transformation is not difficult to detect, but in the latter so much care is required to recognize the change that penal science has relegated the sign to a secondary place. As to the length of time since a tattoo-mark has been executed, authorities are that it is impossible to tell after two or three weeks. Whether a tattoo-mark is real or feigned is easily settled by simply washing the part. This question, as well as that of the judicial consequences of such marks, is hardly pertinent to the matter in hand. VALUE OF PROFESSIONAL STIGMATA. The so-called professional signs are of undoubted value in the surface examination for establishing identity, but it does not seem that their importance warrants the extreme prolixity given to them by some Continental writers, and even by one in the city of Mexico, Dr. Jose Ramos.[593] For instance, it is pretended that cataract is more common among jewellers because of the fineness of their work; yet out of 952 cataracts, of which a record has been kept, only two cases occurred in jewellers. Besides, there is not one special sign or physical trace left on the body by which a prostitute may be known, notwithstanding the fact that in life the collective appearance would seldom deceive an experienced man. Only in the case of sodomy, where anal coitus has been frequent, would characteristic signs be found. On anal examination of 446 prostitutes, Dr. Coutagne[594] found the signs of post-perineal coitus in 180. He cites the case of a young prostitute presenting the astonishing contrast of a gaping anus surrounded by characteristic rhagades, with the genital parts of an extreme freshness, a very narrow vagina, and non-retracted hymen, constituting by their reunion a still firm ring. A fact yet more curious is shown by a specimen in the collection of the museum of the laboratory of legal medicine at Lyons. The genital organs of the cadaver of a woman of twenty-eight or thirty years showed a hymen intact and firm, but on examining the anal region it was surprising to find an infundibuliform deformity with all the signs of sodomitical habits, which of course rectified the opinion that had been made regarding the chastity of this woman. Many of the signs enumerated as peculiar to different callings have no special anatomical characteristic that is easy to distinguish with precision, consequently they do not present a degree of certainty or constancy sufficient to be invoked as strong medico-legal proof of identity. Moreover, the effects of time or treatment may have caused alteration or disappearance of many of the signs in question, which would at best be of negative rather than of absolute value. To arrive at an impartial appreciation of the relative value of the professional stigmata as signs of identity, a certain number of the signs should be thrown aside as illusory. Others, on the contrary, are durable, special, and constant, and assist in establishing the identity accordingly as the lesions or alterations are complete or evident; but it should be borne in mind that the physical alterations and chemical modifications resulting from the exercise of certain trades are not in our country so important from a medico-legal point of view as they are in Europe, where class distinctions are more defined. VALUE OF STAINS AND DIFFERENT IMPRINTS. In the same manner that a very small portion or fragment of the human body may suffice to establish the _corpus delicti_, so will minute remains or traces, as finger-marks, footprints, and other material surroundings, even smells or traces of perfume, be of great assistance to justice in determining the identity of both culprit and victim, and at the same time throw light on the attendant circumstances of the deed. The traces of a bloody hand or foot, smears of tar or paint, the various spots or stains found on fabrics, instruments, etc., may involve questions of great nicety the relativity of which is apparent, especially in criminal trials. Newspapers have familiarized the public with many cases of the kind, in which medical experts have demonstrated blood and other stains with sufficient accuracy and positiveness to satisfy a jury. The Cronin case is a notable instance. IMPRINTS MADE BY FINGER-TIPS are known to be singularly persistent. In four specimens of inked digit marks of Sir William Herschel, made in the years 1860, 1874, 1885, and 1888 respectively, though there was a difference of twenty-eight years between the first and last, no difference could be perceived between the impressions. The forms of the spirals remained the same, not only in general character, but in minute and measurable details, as in the distances from the centre of the spiral and in the direction at which each new ridge took its rise. Sir William Herschel has made great use of digit-marks for the purposes of legal attestation among natives of India.[595] The extraordinary persistence of the papillary ridges on the inner surface of the hands throughout life has been a theme of discussion by the Royal Society,[596] and Mr. Galton has devised a method of indexing finger-marks.[597] The IMPRESS OF A NAKED FOOT covered with blood may serve to direct the investigations of justice. In a criminal affair in France, where eight individuals were implicated, comparative experiments upon the identity of the foot, made with a view to determine to which of the individuals ought to be attributed the bloody footprints found near a wardrobe, it was shown that a degree of recognition could be established on reproducing the footprints with defibrinated blood. From the eight imprints of the left foot of each individual, impregnated with blood, measures and comparisons could be made, thus helping to establish the difference or the resemblance with those found near the wardrobe. Imprints thus obtained may be looked upon as a kind of documentary evidence, but too much importance should not be attached to them as articles tending to prove criminality. The futility of such evidence is shown in the varying sizes of different impressions of the foot of the same person—first in rapid progression, secondly by standing, and third by slow advance. The results appear less sure in the case of footprints made in mud, sand, dust, or snow. Nevertheless many facts relating thereto may be noted with great certainty. The question has been mooted as to whether or not the impress left upon the soil gives always the exact dimensions of the foot that has made them. One side has contended that the footprints _are a little smaller_, while the other refutes this opinion and thinks that they are _a little larger_. The consistency of the soil, which does not seem to have entered into the discussion, doubtless accounts for the small differences that have given rise to this discrepancy of opinion. The outline of the sole of the foot and the relative position of the toes are more or less neatly designed as the ground is more or less wet or soft. The means employed for taking impressions of foot or other tracks in mud, etc., show considerable ingenuity on the part of those who have elaborated the subject. To discover foot-marks in mud, powdered stearic acid is spread over the imprint and a heat of at least 212° is applied from above. By this means a solid mould may be taken of the imprint. These researches have been extended to the exact reproduction of imprints left upon snow by pouring melted gelatine upon the imprint previously sprinkled with a little common table salt, which rapidly lowers the temperature of the snow about fifteen degrees and permits the mould to be taken without too much hurry. The study has been extended to the configuration of the plantar imprints in tabetics, but it does not appear so far to be of much medico-legal value. The question may arise as to the length of time since the imprints were made. This would, of course, depend upon many circumstances, as weather, temperature, and the like. It is a fact that in Greenland footsteps in snow have been recognized many months after they were made. A few summers ago, on an arctic expedition, I climbed Cape Lisbourne, Alaska, in company with another person. The ground being thawed in many places, our feet left very decided imprints in the mud. A year afterward I visited the same spot, and on again making the ascent was astonished to recognize the footsteps made the year before. Circumstances sometimes direct expert attention to vestiges of other animals. The tracks of a dog or of a horse may become the object of a medico-legal inquest. The books record a case in which it was necessary to ascertain whether a bite had been made by a large or a small dog. This question was settled by producing the dogs and comparing their teeth with the scars. Persons familiar with border life know the importance of trails and the minute observation that is brought to bear on them by the experienced frontiersman. In following cattle-thieves and murderers, while with the Fourth United States Cavalry on the Rio Grande frontier, I have known the peculiarity of a horse’s footprint in the prairie to tell a tale of great significance. Observation in this respect may extend to such apparently trivial objects as the tracks of wheels, as those of a wagon, a wheelbarrow, or a bicycle, or to the singular imprints left by crutches or a walking-stick. The imprint left in the ground by a cane usually occurs in the remarkable order of every two and a half or every four and a half steps. Investigation of such circumstances may result in material facts that may be of great assistance in establishing the relation of one or several persons with some particular act. DEFORMITIES AND PATHOLOGICAL PECULIARITIES. The existence of deformities or injuries is so apparent in serving to establish identity that it seems almost superfluous to mention them, except for the purpose of deciding whether the wounds were made during life or after death. In the matter of gunshot wounds on persons who took part in the late Civil War, many of whom unfortunately belong to the vagrant class and are often found dead, their wounds sometimes afford excellent means of identification. In many instances the multiple character of these wounds is almost incredible. When on duty at the Army Medical Museum, in connection with the preparation of the “Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion,” I saw a man who was literally wounded from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, the scars being fifty-two in number. WOUNDS MADE DURING LIFE might show the suggillation peculiar to bruises or traces of inflammation. Besides, the gaping nature of the lips of the wound, the fact of hemorrhage having taken place and the coagulation of the blood, the infiltration of blood into the cellular tissue, etc., are surgical facts that would leave but little doubt as to the infliction of the wounds during life. The _cause of death_ is often a difficult matter to determine, as it may have been accidental, suicidal, or the result of homicide. The causes relating thereto are, moreover, so many and varied that space and time compel a reference to other headings of this work. In forming an opinion as to _the probable date of death_ the extent of putrefaction is the chief guide. If death is quite recent, we may be guided by the post-mortem rigidity or the extent to which the body has cooled. The march of putrefactive decomposition would, of course, be regulated by circumstances. It takes place very rapidly in persons who have succumbed to excessive fatigue or to any disassimilative excesses or derangement resulting in ante-mortem change of the tissues, such as those occurring in virulent or infectious diseases. The body of an infant decays more rapidly that that of an adult. The course of putrefactive phenomena is also influenced by the seasons, the extent of the exposure to air, and to other mesological causes. There is a manifest difference in the special putrefactive change accordingly as a body is buried in the earth, submerged in a fluid, thrown into a cesspool, or buried in a dung-heap. In certain cases, especially where the body has been much mutilated, it may be desirable to know whether there was _one or several murderers_. While no definite rule can be laid down on this point, we are justified in supposing that there were two or more assassins when the body of the victim shows both gunshot and knife wounds, or that two persons were concerned in the dismemberment and mutilation of a body which shows the simultaneous presence of parts skilfully cut, while others show evident awkwardness. Where there is _more than one mortal wound_ on the same dead body, a question of medico-legal significance may arise. This occurred in the Burton murder case at Newport, R. I., in 1885, which gave rise to discussion of the following abstract question: “Whether it is possible for an individual, with suicidal intent, and in quick succession, to inflict a perforating shot of the head and another of the chest implicating the heart. Or, reversing the proposition, is it incredible that a person bent on self-destruction can, with his own hand, shoot himself in the heart and in the head?” After consideration of the case referred to and reversal of the previous decision of the coroner, the supposed suicide proved to be a homicide. Yet if the abstract question of possibilities is alone regarded, there is no doubt of the fact that a suicide could shoot himself in such manner, both in the head and the heart, or, changing the order, of shots in the heart and in the head. The number of cases recorded establishes beyond a doubt the feasibility of the self-infliction of two such wounds, and make it clear that the theory of suicide may be maintained in such circumstances.[598] JUDICIAL ANTHROPOMETRY. Of late years the subject of anthropometric identification has taken such a place before justice that it cannot be ignored by the medical legist. The facts of scientific anthropology have here been applied in such a way as to establish with great certainty both the present and future identity of individuals who attempt dissimulation of their name and antecedents. The method used principally in the identification of criminals and deserters from the army has been adopted in the public service[599] and by most municipalities, with the exception of New York, where the subsequent identification of persons connected with municipal affairs has been and may be a source of no little embarrassment. The system is based on three recognitory elements: photography, anthropometric measurements, and personal markings, from which a descriptive list is made that gives absolute certainty as to individual identity. Owing to the illusory nature of photography and the difficulty in finding the portrait of any given individual in the large and constantly increasing collection of a “rogues’ gallery,” the matter has been simplified and facilitated by grouping the photographic collection according to the six anthropological coefficients of sex, stature, age, and color of the eyes. Each of these primordial groups is again subdivided in such a way as to reduce the last group to a small number, when the portrait is easily found and verified on comparing the measurements of the head, of the extended arms, the length of the left foot, and that of the left middle finger. The photographic proof for each individual consists of two portraits side by side, one of which is taken full face, the other in profile of the _right_ side. On the back of the photographic card is recorded with rigorous precision all personal markings or peculiarities. The measurements, which can be made by any person of average intelligence in three or four minutes, are extremely simple. The _right_ ear is always measured, for the reason that this organ is always reproduced in the traditional photograph which represents the right face. Other special measurements are taken on the left side. The height sitting, dimensions and character of the nose, color of eyes, etc., are also noted. It is contended that by these measurements alone the identity of an individual whose face is not even known may be established in another country by telegraph. The application of the system has proved of great service in the apprehension of deserters from the United States army (when the authorities have been able to find the card), while it is claimed to have caused the disappearance of numerous dissimulators of identity in the prisons of Paris. The police authorities of that city report that out of more than five hundred annual recognitions by the foregoing means, not one mistake has yet occurred.[600] To avoid a _possible source of error_ mensuration of the organs and the ascertainment of their form may be resorted to in the case of a cadaver that is much decayed, or in one that has been purposely mutilated or burned by the assassin in order to prevent recognition. A sufficient number of cases may be cited in which the measurement of a limb or a bone of a deceased person known to have been lame or deformed during life has resulted in the establishment of identity or the reverse. A mistake may be prevented in the case of supposed mutilation of a drowned body, which may have been caused by the screw of a passing steamer. Other errors may result from carelessness, incorrect observation of signs, and neglect to follow the ordinary precautions that should obtain in all researches on identity of the dead body. Certain circumstances indicative of the _mental state of the culprit_ may throw light on the identity. A person of unsound mind would certainly be suggested as the perpetrator of such a deed as that of the woman already mentioned, who after killing and cutting up her infant, cooked portions of the remains with cabbage and served them at a meal of which she herself partook. Equally conclusive should be the inference in the case cited by Maudsley of a person who, for no ascertainable motive, kills a little girl, mutilates her remains, and carefully records the fact in his note-book, with the remark that the body was _hot and good_. The _handwriting_ left by the assassin might also furnish a strong presumption as to the existence of a mental lesion, since the writing of the insane is often characteristic, especially in the initial stage of dementia. I recall the case of a former patient, an _aphasic_, imprisoned for having stabbed a man in the abdomen and for having wounded his wife in such a way that her arm had to be amputated. Having lost the power to express himself phonetically, this man used a book and pencil, but his writing showed a degree of _agraphia_ which alone would establish his identity beyond a doubt. While it is quite possible that dishonest transactions, and even theft, may take place by _telephone_ and the voices of the perpetrators may be unmistakable between distant cities, it is more likely that the phonographic registration of speech or other sound by means of a _gramophone_ should become a matter of medico-legal investigation and a possible means that may lend great assistance in establishing personal identity. Although no precedent may be cited, it is not going into the domain of theoretical hypothesis to mention a discovery of such real scientific certainty that for years after death, and thousands of miles away, gives an indefinite number of reproductions that cannot possibly be mistaken by any one familiar with the voice before it had become “Edisonized.” Some gramophone disks lately shown me from Germany registered greetings and messages to relatives in Washington, who were delighted to recognize the exact reproduction of familiar tones and accents of the Fatherland. So limitless is the field of research in this direction that there is scarcely an anthropological, biological, or medical discovery that may not sooner or later be applied with profit in the investigations of personal identity where the combined efforts of an attorney and an expert are required. After the most rigid and scrutinizing anatomical and material examination is made and the closest inquisition entered on, it may often be impossible to give a reasonable explanation for the cause of the physical facts observed. The medical man should remember that his is the one great exception to the rule that rigidly excludes opinions, and that scientific men called as witnesses may not give their opinion as to the general merits of the case, but only as to the facts already proved. This qualifying rule being altogether reversed in investigations into personal identity, and the physician’s opinion as to identity being indispensable, it becomes a matter of most serious import that this opinion should be grounded upon absolute and well-attested facts. MEDICO-LEGAL DETERMINATION OF THE TIME OF DEATH. BY H. P. LOOMIS, A.M., M.D., _Professor of Pathology in the University of the City of New York; Visiting Physician and Curator to Bellevue Hospital, New York; Pathologist to the Board of Health, New York City; President New York Pathological Society, etc., etc._ MEDICO-LEGAL DETERMINATION OF THE TIME OF DEATH. SIGNS OF DEATH. THE cessation of respiration and the absence of audible heart-beats are signs generally regarded as sufficient in themselves to determine the reality of death. But persons have been resuscitated from a state of asphyxia or have recovered from a state of catalepsy or lethargy in whom, _to all appearances_, the respiratory and circulatory processes have been arrested. So it is advisable that we should be acquainted with some absolute tests of death which are not connected with the heart-sounds or the respiration. It is well known that these important functions, although apparently held in abeyance, must be speedily re-established so as to be recognized, or death will rapidly follow. This condition of apparently suspended animation is seen among hibernating animals; the bear, for instance, will remain for four or five months without food or drink in a state of lethargy—the heart-action and respiration hardly appreciable. Yet it will be sufficiently rapid to sustain life during the slow metabolic processes. A number of well-authenticated cases are reported in which persons could slacken their heart-action, so that no movement of the organ could be appreciated. The case of Colonel Townsend, reported by Cheyne, is an example. He possessed the power of apparently dying, by slowing his heart so that there was no pulse or heart-action discernible. The longest period he could remain in this inanimate state was half an hour. Instances have occurred in the new-born child where without question there have been no heart-beats or respiratory movements for a number of minutes, the limit being set at five. These are exceptional cases, and it is setting at defiance all physiological experience to suppose that the heart-action and respiration can be suspended entirely when once they are established, for a period as long. So, then, if no motion of the heart occurs during a period of five minutes—a period five times as great as observation warrants—death may be regarded as certain. The respiratory movements of the chest are sometimes very difficult to observe. They can always be better appreciated if the abdomen and chest are observed together. There are two methods to determine whether respiration is absolutely suspended or not. First, by holding a mirror in front of the open mouth, observing whether any moisture collects on its surface. Second, by placing on the chest a looking-glass or basin of water, and reflecting from it an image by artificial or sun light. The slightest movement would be registered by a change in position of the image. While the writer considers the absence of heart-beats and of respiratory movement an absolute test of death, still some cases may occur in which the establishment of this test is very difficult, and the following additional tests may be employed: