NCJ Number
142089
Editor(s)
W U Spitz
Date Published
1993
Length
853 pages
Annotation
This text provides 22 chapters written by professionals in forensic pathology on medicolegal considerations, medical techniques, and medical investigations of deaths due to various types of physical trauma.
Abstract
The first chapter reviews the history of forensic pathology and related laboratory sciences, followed by three papers that pertain to determination of time of death and changes after death. Issues discussed in the three papers are anatomical considerations, chemical considerations, and forensic entomology and its use in the determination of time since death. Other chapters discuss issues in the identification of human remains, forensic odontology, sudden and unexpected death from natural causes in adults, trauma and disease, blunt force injury, sharp-force injury, and injury by gunfire. The latter chapter considers both gunshot wounds and shotgun wounds. Separate chapters also address medicolegal investigations of thermal injuries, asphyxia, drowning, electrical and lightning injuries, road traffic injuries, mass disasters, mechanical injuries of brain and meninges, and the investigation of deaths in childhood. The latter chapter addresses infanticide and neonaticide, the battered child and adolescent, and the differential diagnosis of child abuse. Remaining chapters focus on microscopic forensic pathology, the investigation of deaths from drug abuse, the forensic aspects of alcohol, selected procedures at autopsy, and the medicolegal autopsy report. Chapter references, a subject index, and photographic illustrations