Page:Introductory lecture on medical jurisprudence - delivered in the theatre of the Royal Dublin Society, on Saturday, the 16th November, 1839 (IA b21916512).pdf/13

11 room. He was convicted and executed—having confessed that he had first rendered his victim insensible with prussic acid, and then cut his throat, and immediately after cut up the body.

A body divided into two parts was taken out of the Loire. It was divided exactly through the cartilage, between the third and fourth lumbra vertebras, and there were besides several wounds in the abdomen. From the manner in which the division was effected, the examiner, Dr. Ouvrad, concluded it had been done by some person accustomed to such an operation; and as the wounds in the belly proved the man had been murdered, he conjectured that the murderer was probably a butcher. This proved true. The criminal was discovered, convicted, and executed.

1 have cited these cases, not only as examples of the assistance medical science is capable of affording to the administration of justice, but as shewing that this assistance is often of a kind with which persons who have not attended to the subject are but little familiar. I will now briefly refer to two other cases, which even more strikingly exemplify this.

In 1823, a soldier named Bonino suddenly disappeared from a village near Montpellier, where he had for some time lived. Suspicion fell upon a paramour of his, and a man whom she subsequently married; but no investigation took place for three years after; when the magistrates having directed a search, a body was found in the garden of the suspected persons. After a careful examination of the remains of the body—all the soft parts of which, except the vertebral ligaments, were destroyed—Dr. Delmas was able to arrive at the following conclusions: that the individual had been a male, of the age of forty or upwards, and had six fingers on his right hand, and possibly a sixth toe on the left foot; (it was ascertained that Bonino had these peculiarities, and that he was forty-six years of age); that he had been murdered by a blow of a blunt weapon, which fractured the left temporal bone; and that he had been buried in his clothes. The husband and wife were tried