hofs - Timeline

perform the first autopsies.

Fingerprints first used to determine identity. Arabic merchants would take a debtor's fingerprint and attach it to the bill.

Germanic and Slavic societies made law that medical experts must be the ones to determine cause of death in crimes.

Julius Caesar is assassinated. Following this event, a physician performed an autopsy, and determined that of the 23 wounds found on the body, only one was fatal.

Fingerprints were used in China

Chinese used fingerprints to establish identity of documents and clay sculpture, but without any formal classification system.

Quintilian, an attorney in the Roman courts, showed that bloody palm prints were meant to frame a blind man of his mother's murder.

In Lancaster, England, John Toms was convicted of murder on the basis of the torn edge of wad of newspaper in a pistol matching a remaining piece in his pocket. This was one of the first documented uses of physical matching.

Ancient forensics Archimedes realising that his body displaced an equal volume of water was an important step for forensic science.The Ancient Greeks and Romans were the first to practise forensic science.

Francois Demelle publishes the first treatise on systematic document examination

1828 William Nichol invented the polarizing light microscope.

1903 The New York State Prison system began the first systematic use of fingerprints in United States for criminal identification.

Leuchs first noted amylase activity in human saliva.

1916 Albert Schneider of Berkeley, California first used a vacuum apparatus to collect trace evidence.

First pathology reports published.

First forensic science manual published by the Chinese. This was the first known record of medical knowledge being used to solve criminal cases.

Ancient forensics Archimedes realising that his body displaced an equal volume of water was an important step for forensic science.The Ancient Greeks and Romans were the first to practise forensic science. The word forensic means 'in open court' in Latin.

Antoine Francois Fourcroy was examining disinterred bodies from the "Cemetry of Innocent" and described adipocere. He and Michel Augustin Thouret later find thta its chemical structure is similar to that of soap