Exhibition Images
Image 28 of 43
Upon a View of the Body
Cadaver buried February 7, 1828, and exhumed April 24, 1828
Orfila was a towering figure in the emergent field of forensics. His 1831 treatise was the first book to be devoted solely to the subject of exhumation and decomposition.
Mathieu J.B. Orfila, M.D., and Octave Lesueur, M.D., Traité des exhumations juridiques…; [Treatise on legal exhumations, and considerations on the physical transformations undergone by cadavers rotting in the earth, in water, in toilets and in manure]; Paris, 1831. Chromolithograph, artist: Hippolyte Vanderburch
National Library of Medicine