It is better for two medical men to conduct the examination together. Do not make the examination without an order from the coroner. A medical man who is alleged as implicated in the cause of death should not be present.
Identification of the dead may present special difficulties where mutilation of the body has taken place, or where the body has been severely burnt, or is disfigured as in cases of explosions or advanced putrefaction. In such cases, fragments of clothes, ornaments, and dental work may afford valuable evidence.
Occupation Marks.—As an aid to identification, it is important to remember that certain trades leave marks by which those engaged in them may be identified.
Thus, in shoemakers there may be more or less depression of the lower portion of the sternum, due to constant pressure of the last against the bone.
Tailors work sitting, with the legs crossed and the body bent forward. The body is thus cramped, and the abdomen drawn in, and the thorax projects over it, due to the manner of sitting. They frequently have a soft red tumour on the external malleolus. A like tumour, but not so large, may also be found on the external edge of the foot, and a corn on the little toe.
Photographers have their fingers blackened by nitrate of silver, pyrogallic acid and other developers, or stained yellow with bichromate of potash.
Seamstresses have the index finger of the left hand roughened by the constant pricking of the needle.
Copyists have on the little finger of the right hand, near its extremity, a corn, and at the end of the middle finger a hard groove made by the pen.
Violinists have corns on the tips of the fingers of the left hand, harpists on both hands.
In smokers of pipes the incisors and canines are more or less worn by the mouthpiece, but sometimes the groove is between the canines and bicuspids. In cigarette smokers, the forefinger and thumb are stained with tobacco juice, also between the index and middle fingers, on the dorsum.