And that's not all! You'll also receive a complimentary bag with an inspiring quote. Code copied to clipboard! Valid Until: 15 December If you require assistance, contact us at orders intechopen. Open access. Submitted: 26 October Published: 12 September Medical expertise is crucial in death investigations.
The key goal is to provide objective evidence of cause, timing, and manner of death for adjudication by the criminal justice system. Death investigation has been performed for centuries in all societies, although not always by medical professionals Committee, The association of law and medicine dates back to the Egyptian culture as early as B.
The English coroner system was mentioned in documentations around the 12th century B. Spitz, Although the primary goal of a death investigation is to establish the cause and manner of death, the role of the death investigation extends much further than simply answering these two questions.
The person is dead. And this interest goes beyond simple curiosity Wagner, In homicide, suspected homicide, and other suspicious or obscure cases, the forensic medicine expert should visit the scene of the death before the body is removed. Local practice varies but any doctor claiming to be a forensic medicine expert should always make himself available to accompany the police to the locus of the death. In many cases, the scene investigation is more important than the autopsy.
Why go to the scene? The purpose of having the forensic medicine expert attend the death scene is severalfold. By viewing the body in the context of its surroundings, the forensic medicine expert is better able to interpret certain findings at the autopsy such as a patterned imprint across the neck from collapsing onto an open vegetable drawer in a refrigerator. The forensic medicine expert is also able to advise the investigative agency about the nature of the death, whether to confirm a homicide by a specific means, evaluate the circumstances to be consistent with an apparent natural death, or interpret the blood loss from a deceased person as being more likely due to natural disease than to injury.
