Medical Jurisprudence, Forensic medicine and Toxicology. Vol. 1

by R. A. Witthaus; Tracy C. Becker

THE HAIR AND NAILS.

Since the hair and nails resist decomposition an unusually long time, and are even believed to grow after somatic death, they may be considered as accessories of such value in the question that occupies us as to make it possible to verify certain characteristics regarding the remains of the cadaver even after years of inhumation. For instance, hypertrophy of the great toe-nail, the length and color of the hair, baldness, or a long beard might furnish evidence of the best kind. Both hair and nails may, however, change after death. A case is mentioned[582] in which the hair changed from a dark brown to red after twenty years of burial. Accredited cases of the growth of hair after death are also on record. Dr. Caldwell, of Iowa, states that he was present in 1862 at the exhumation of a body which had been buried for four years. He found that the coffin had given at the joints and that the hair protruded through the openings. He had evidence to show that the deceased was shaved before burial, nevertheless the hair of the head measured eighteen inches, the whiskers eight inches, and the hair of the breast four to six inches.[583] Quite recently in unearthing the remains of an old cemetery in Washington, D. C., a number of persons noticed that when the body of a young girl, supposed to be about twelve or thirteen years of age, was taken up it was found that her hair had grown until it extended from her crown to her feet. Many careful observations seem to prove the molecular life of the hair and nails after somatic death. It suffices to quote the well-known case mentioned in Ogston’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” of several medical students who were brought to trial for having in custody the dead body of an idiot boy. When found on the dissecting-table the body was so disfigured that there was only one means left of proving its identity. The boy had a whim during life of permitting his nails to grow, and had not allowed them to be cut for many years previous to his death. They had completely curled round the tips of his fingers and toes till they had thus come to extend along the palmar and plantar surfaces in a strange way. The counsel for the prosecution availed himself of the knowledge of this fact, and his proof seemed to be complete, when a medical man came forward and gave in evidence that it was not an unusual circumstance for the nails to grow for several inches after death. This astounding statement so nonplussed the judge that the case was allowed to drop as not proven.

In exceptional cases the hair may be green. I saw a case some years since, for which no cause could be assigned, and only a few days ago I saw another in a man who worked in a brass-foundry. At the Cronin trial a barber, who had counted the victim among his customers, recognized the shape of the head and texture of the hair. Subsequent evidence of medical experts was conclusive as to the identity of hair found clinging to a trunk, the hair cut from the head of the murdered man, and that of a single hair discovered on a cake of soap. This single strand, being lighter in color in some portions than in others, seemed to indicate that it could not have come from the head of the deceased, whose hair was brown. But it was shown that hair placed on soap or other alkaline substances becomes bleached in a manner similar to the color of a single thread. This evidence of vital importance linked the hair found in the trunk with that cut from Dr. Cronin’s head, and went far toward proving that one of the murderers had washed his hands with the soap after the deed had been done.

Reviewing the signs furnished by the osseous system, it will be seen that the study of the skeleton alone is beyond contradiction more satisfactory and more important in establishing identity than that of all the other organs. Consequently a correct interpretation of the facts observed and judicious application of the rules deducible therefrom may in the matter of a human skeleton put its identity beyond a reasonable doubt. But the expert should remember that as no two cases are just alike, unexpected questions and unforeseen features may present themselves, giving to each case merits of its own. At best the medical man’s conclusions will be probabilities, not certainties; therefore his expressions of opinion should be the more guarded, as upon it may hang the life of an innocent man.

IDENTIFICATION OF MUTILATED REMAINS.

Many of the foregoing remarks on the identity of the skeleton apply in cases where mutilated remains or a portion only of the body has been recovered. Circumstances often occur in which bodies may require identification after having been drowned and partly eaten by fishes or crabs, or after having been partly eaten by buzzards, or torn into fragments by animals, as has happened in the remains of a dead infant partly devoured by a dog, and in the case of a farmer who died in the woods and was subsequently eaten by his own hogs. After accidents and fires where many persons perish; after a railway disaster where bodies have been mangled, drowned, burnt, and frozen, all in the same accident; or after an explosion from steam or gas or in a mine, or from gunpowder, dynamite, or other substance, the human remains are generally in such a state as to defy all attempts at recognition.

To dispose of a dead body in order to avoid detection, criminals will mutilate, disfigure, and chop into fragments the remains, which they afterward place in a trunk, a wardrobe, or throw into a sewer or other hiding-place. Scarcely a year passes that judiciary medicine is not concerned with cases of the kind. The frequency of such crimes has been attributed by some to the so-called contagion of murder; others offer the simple law of the series in explanation; others still believe that imitation is the principal cause. While there is no doubt a grain of truth in each of these, less philosophic minds will look upon such a beastly proceeding as a mark of the complete satisfaction sought by the destructive instinct.

Why such things should be is of less concern than the fact that criminal mutilation of the dead body is not confined to any age or country. Though more frequent in the last fifteen years, it takes up quite a space in the history of human cruelty. The violent passion, wrath, and vengeance that caused the prophet Isaiah to be sawn in two at the age of one hundred years by order of Manasses and Agag cut into pieces by Samuel have not materially changed in the days of Jack the Ripper; and we find such crimes in antipodal parts of the world, among varied sociological conditions, no matter whether it be the North American Indian, who scalps and mutilates his enemy and places the severed penis in the mouth, or the civilized European, who cuts up the body of his victim and serves it in a curry at a feast of assembled friends.[584]

This new point of judiciary medicine has lately been elaborated by European writers under the title of Dépeçage Criminel, a term which applies to the operation resorted to by an assassin having for its end the getting rid of the body of the victim and to render more difficult the establishment of its identity.

The cleverness of experts scarcely keeps pace nowadays with the more complicated proceedings adopted by criminals. In fact, at a trial of this kind truth and science are often the under dogs in a fight, than which none in forensic medicine is longer and more embarrassing. To cause a rapid disappearance of the proofs of a homicide, with a view to escape the investigations of justice, murderers have been known literally to make hash of the victim which was subsequently eaten by themselves and others. Gruner relates the case of a man who, having killed and cut into pieces his victim, boiled and roasted the fragments and ate them with his wife. Such examples, however, suggest morbid rather than passional phenomena, which manifestly call for rigid scrutiny into the mental state of the culprit, who may be more of a lunatic than a malefactor.