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Human saliva
Leuchs first noted amylase activity in human saliva. -
Toxicology
James Marsh, an Scottish chemist, was the first to use toxicology (arsenic detection) in a jury trial. -
H.Bayard
H. Bayard published the first reliable procedures for the microscopic detection of sperm. He also noted the different microscopic characteristics of various different substrate fabrics. -
Jean Servais Stas
Jean Servais Stas, a chemistry professorprofessor from Brussels, Belgium, was the first successfully to identify vegetable poisons in body tissue. -
crystal test
Ludwig Teichmann, in Kracow, Poland, developed the first microscopic crystal test for hemoglobin using hemin crystals. -
Sir William Herschel
Sir William Herschel, a British officer working for the Indian Civil service, began to use thumbprints on documents both as a substitute for written signatures for illiterates and to verify document signatures. -
Maddox
An English physician, Maddox, developed dry plate photography, eclipsing M. Daguerre’s wet plate on tin method.
This made practical the photographing of inmates for prison records. -
Blood test
The Dutch scientist J. (Izaak) Van Deen developed a presumptive test for blood using guaiac, a West Indian shrub. -
Schonbein
The German scientist Schönbein first discovered the ability of hemoglobin to oxidize hydrogen peroxide making it foam. This resulted in first presumptive test for blood -
Odelbrecht
Odelbrecht first advocated the use of photography for the identification of criminals and the documentation of evidence and crime scenes. -
thomas taylor
Thomas Taylor, microscopist to U.S. Department of Agriculture suggested that markings of the palms of the hands and the tips of the fingers could be used for identification in criminal cases. Although reported in the American Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science and Scientific American, the idea was apparently never pursued from this source. -
Rudolph Virchow
Rudolph Virchow, a German pathologist, was one of the first to both study hair and recognize its limitations -
Henry Faulds
Henry Faulds, a Scottish physician working in Tokyo, published a paper in the journal Nature suggesting that fingerprints at the scene of a crime could identify the offender. In one of the first recorded uses of fingerprints to solve a crime, Faulds used fingerprints to eliminate an innocent suspect and indicate a perpetrator in a Tokyo burglary. -
railroad
Gilbert Thompson, a railroad builder with the U.S Geological Survey in New Mexico, put his own thumbprint on wage chits to safeguard himself from forgeries.
