Reviews

RECENT ADVANCES

Recent Advances in Forensic Pathology F. E. Camps (Churchill, London, 1969; 236 pp., g 3 )

This review of modern opinion and development in Forensic Pathology is intended for Clinical Pathologists undertaking medicolegal work, although specialists in the field will also find it of value. In the main it is easily read, informative, and supported by plentiful references. There are particularly good passages on the heart changes in sudden death, the effects of immersion, the interpretation of penetrating injuries, and the recognition of violence in children, all accompanied by good illustrations and recent work. Chapters on identification by dental and serological means are also of the same high standard.

Tropical diseases responsible for sudden death and abnormal behaviour have also been usefully included. Other chapters on poisoning by both common means and addictive drugs once more underline our real lack of knowledge, but give useful help on the most suitable specimens to select for analysis. Elsewhere, the book includes much generally useful information for the Pathologist, including recent legal changes and the problems associated with determination of death. I t also provides regular apt reminders for Forensic Pathologists to maintain both quality and a high index of suspicion.

In all, this is an informative and stimulating book which achieves its intended - purposes.

D. G. Rushton

SCOTT ON SCOTT

Photographic Evidence Charles C. Scott (West Publishing Co., St. Paul, Minn., 1969; 2nd ed., 3 vols., 2053pp., no price)

This must be the most comprehensive work on the subject ever published. In these handsomely bound volumes the author deals with every possible application of photography in court work.

Volume 1 begins with the historical background of photography and cites a number of cases which have established the authority of the various products of the photographic process as evidence. Then follow chapters on the whole range of subjects under the heading "Still Photographs Generally".

The value of various types of cameras for their own particular subject is discussed at length. There are many illustrations showing different types of photography and examples of the right and wrong way of doing things. The correct choice of lens and viewpoint in order to produce correct perspective is emphasized, and a person without any photographic knowledge could quite easily follow the author a.s he dwells long enough to cover each subject without labouring any particular point.

Volume 2 deals with the specific and more technical processes and includes Ultraviolet, Infrared, Cine and Polaroid photography. I t also makes reference to video tape recording and its applications.

Photomicrography and its specific application to poroscopy in fingerprints and medicolegal subjects such as blood, semen, hair and fibres, is briefly but sufficicntly covered. Although ultraviolet and infrared photography are discussed and several examples are shown the writer would like to have seen some diagrammatic explanation of the technique and phenomena.

Darkroom work and the preparation of court exhibits are fairly explicitly dealt with and there are over 200 pages in which cases are cited where admissibility of photographs was established in almost every incident which can result in legal proceedings, civil or criminal.

Volume 3 covers the presentation of photographic evidence, practice and procedure. The admissibility of various photographic representations, including X-ray and colour photographs, is explained and various authorities quoted. How counsel should deal with an opponent's photographs together with sug- gested lines of cross-examination makes interesting reading, as does the section dealing with "Arguments (judicial) and remarks". This volun~e is concluded by a glossary, a table of cases and a first-class index.

The author neatly divides the scientific or practical side from the legal aspect by grouping the former under "Topic A" and the latter under "Topic B". Both aspects are extremely well dealt with, lucid and easy to read.

Although the book is American in origin it must have worldwide interest as the procedure and applications are in accord with those practised in most other countries. The cases quoted are from the courts in the U.S.A. but there is an abundance of references to the works of many authors in the U.K. and several other countries.

Police Forces, Lawyers, Forensic Scientists and all others connected with court work, both criminal and civil, will find this book invaluable whenever photographic evidence is considered or introduced. -- -

Harry Scott

CROWSON ON C1,ASSIFICATION

Classification and Biology R. A. Crowson (Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., London, 1970; 350 @., £3.15)

"I'm a one-eyed Jewish Negro", said the American comedian Sammy Davis Jnr. "I got all the handicaps I can use."

The new reader coming to this book may feel that it has all the handicaps it can use. These are of the author's own making and include a surfeit of quotations in Latin, French and English and extracts from Victorian poets, Greek philosophers and Lewis Carroll. Add to this the essential complexity of the subject matter, the wide-ranging field and the author's determination not to skimp things (one paragraph mentions Cepheid variable stars, Rodentia, reversed faults, cold fronts and Compositae), and the reader would be fully justified in anticipating an indigestible mess. He would be wrong. The book is fascinating.

Dr. Crowson is concerned with biological classification (although much of what he says can he applied to classification in any field) and with the central position of the systematist as the "final coordinator of all kinds of information about organisms". Its relevance to forensic biology lies in its relation to the incorporation of new methods into forensic science where all too often the approach is method-centred rather than problem-centred.

"It is perhaps an obscure awareness" says Crowson, "that, when elaborate and sophisticated research techniques are adopted, they are only too likely to usurp the central position in the scientist's thought, which accounts for the notable reluctance of many systematists to become involved with modern and complex modes of investigation."

The book should be an encouragement to the technicians involved (and here the word is used in its correct sense of a person conversant with the tech- nicalities of a particular subject) to stand back and consider the problem rather than the technique.

It also provides a stimulus for the view that the forensic biologist should no longer be content to sit back and allow the physical forensic scientist to toss in the taxonomic aspects of his (frequently expensive) investigations as an afterthought.