Autopsy Timeline

By hanna1111
  • 44 BCE

    Julius Caesar

    physicians determined that 23 wounds on the bound on the body and only one was fatal
  • 400

    determinationing of death

    Germanic and Slavic societies made law that medical experts must be the ones to determine cause of death in crimes.
  • Apr 11, 1248

    first forensic science book

    This was the first known record of medical knowledge being used to solve criminal cases.

  • posioning

    German chemist Valentin Ross developed a method of detecting arsenic in a victim's stomach, thus advancing the investigation of poison deaths.

  • fingerprints

    Fingerprints are found and used in discoveries of the cause of death.

  • Sherlock Holmes and the coroner

    Coroner's act established that coroners' were to determine the causes of sudden, violent, and unnatural deaths. Arthur Conan Doyle also publishes the first Sherlock Holmes story.

  • learning about forensics

    First school of forensic science founded by Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, in Switzerland.

  • crime labs

    First police crime lab established in Los Angeles.

  • lie detection tests

    prototype polygraphs were made in 1921 by John Larson for use in police stations.

  • DNA

    Tommy Lee Andrews convicted of a series of sexual assaults, using DNA profiling.