Forensics: the anatomy of crime, Barts Pathology Museum, St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, UK 05 Nov 2014
Bertillon mug shots - Forensics: the anatomy of crime – announcement of Wellcome Collection’s major spring exhibition. Never-displayed items from historic figures of forensic medicine including the work of: Sir Bernard Spilsbury who was the first of the celebrity pathologists whose evidence, taken down on indexed note cards, turned cases - including that of Dr Crippen; Alphonse Bertillon who invented the mug shot and developed classifying techniques for identification (demonstrated in his 1893 book Identification anthropometrique: instructions signaletiques) - Sherlock Holmes is described as ‘the second highest expert in Europe’ after Bertillon in The Hound of the Baskervilles; and the Ortus Sanitus (Garden of Health) a book by Jacob Meydenbach, 1481, illustrating, amongst other things, the relationship of flies to carrion – contradicting existing medieval superstition.
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