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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.