Technologies

^ Return to Technologies
Murder the Result of Various Injuries, 1898
Suicide by Cutting the Throat, 1898
Encircling Gunshot-wound in Brain, 1898
Carbonic-oxide [carbon monoxide] Poisoning with agonal injuries due to a fall, 1898
Suicide through Stabbing, 1898
Bloodstain, blisters, bullet holes, 1864
Head and hand of a drownee, 1864
Decomposed stomach, 1864
Rope marks and upper thigh, 1864
The color of the lungs of dead newborn children: stillborn, newborn who have taken a breath, newborn whose lungs have been artificially inflated, 1864
Encircling Gunshot-wound in Brain, 1898
Encircling Gunshot-wound in Brain, 1898
Plate 20. Encircling Gunshot-wound. An interesting example of deflection of the projectile from the direction of the shot, or of the so-called ricochet-shot, within the body, is the so-called encircling-shot. This is produced when a shot, striking an arched bone obliquely, travels around it. Such gun-shot wounds have been observed not only on the convexity of arched bones...but also on their concavity. The case illustrated in Plate 20 belongs to the latter category. The case was that of a young man who had killed himself with a shot from a revolver of 7 mm. caliber. The projectile perforated the skin of the right temporal region directly in front of the line of the growth of the hair, making a pea-sized blackened opening. It then coursed obliquely upward and backward through the temporal muscles and the great wing of the sphenoid bone into the outer part of the right Sylvian fissure; thence to the concavity of the right frontal vault. From this point it became directed anteroposteriorly around the entire convexity of the brain....
Eduard Ritter von Hofmann, M.D., Atlas of Legal Medicine, Philadelphia, chromolithograph; Artist A. Schmitson
National Library of Medicine
Image 3 of 10

The 19th-century revolution in forensic imaging

In the 19th century, forensic pathologists began using pictures and words to show how various conditions appear in the cadaver, and to teach students and colleagues new methods of analysis. Line drawings, half-tone photography, and chromolithography, which could render coloration, texture, and subtle shading, became increasingly common as improvements in print technology made detailed illustrations cheaper to produce.