Archiwum medycyny sa̧dowej i kryminologii
-
Arch Med Sadowej Kryminol · Jul 2011
Historical Article[Development of forensic thanatology through the prism of analysis of postmortem protocols collected at the Department of Forensic Medicine, Jagiellonian University].
When assessed based on the analysis of postmortem protocols, the successes of forensic thanatology appear to differ from those that might be assumed using as the foundation a review of publications and textbooks. The greatest achievements date back to as early as the 18th and 19th centuries, when the morphological changes observed in the majority of types of deaths resulting from disease-associated and traumatic causes were described. Within the past 130 years, however, or in other words, in the period when autopsy protocols were written that are today collected in the archives of the Krakow Department of Forensic Medicine, the causes and mechanisms of death became understood even when the said factors were associated with discrete postmortem changes only or no no such changes whatsoever were left. ⋯ In contrast to the early phase of the analyzed period, poisoning with such medications cannot be detected on autopsy, yet their introduction promoted the development of forensic toxicology. Nevertheless, for several score years, the heaviest toll was taken by carbon monoxide from the municipal gasworks, which appeared in 1905 and disappeared in 1982, killing as many as in excess of 50 individuals per year. In the collection of more than 60 thousand autopsy protocols, the author managed to find hitherto unknown, interesting cases, e.g. that describing a victim of a fatal accident in a stone quarry, witnessed by Karol Wojtyła during WWII, a victim of an unknown assassination attempt on the life of Bolesław Bierut, as well as protocols of postmortem examinations of bodies of the People's Republic of Poland intelligence agents who died while posted abroad.