Collected Writings on the Washing Away of Wrongs
The first monographic work on forensic medicine in the world is Xiyuan
Jilu (Collected
Writings on the Washing Away of Wrongs), written by Song Ci of the Southern
Song Dynasty (1127-1279). It was written in 1247, and is the earliest
systematic book on judicial examination in the world. Later, it was spread abroad,
and was translated into English, French, Dutch, German, Korean, Japanese, and
Russian as well as other languages.
Chinese forensic medicine has a very long history, with examination by
forensic physicians having been practiced from long ago. When Cai Yong of the Han
Dynasty (206BC-220AD) explained the book Li Ji, Yueling, he defined the
following terms related to injury: Injury of the skin is called shang, injury of
the flesh (involving bleeding) is called chuang, and injury of the bones and
muscles is called zhe. However, before the Song Dynasty (960-1279), there was no
monograph especially for forensic physicians.
Song Ci was born into a bureaucratic family in Jianyang of East China's Fujian
Province, and he worked as a senior judge in criminal court four times.
After years of practice, he accumulated a lot of experience in administrative
justice; hence based on his experience and with reference to a great amount of
related data, he wrote this book.
The major contents of the book include: laws on autopsy in the Song Dynasty;
methods and caution of autopsy; postmortem phenomena; different kinds of death
caused by mechanical asphyxia (suffocation); different kinds of blunt and sharp
instrument injuries; traffic accidents in ancient times; death caused by high
temperature; poisoning; death from illness; sudden death; corpse exhumation; and
so on. All these contents cover the most the central aspects of forensic
pathology.
The major achievements include the following: the
appearance and distribution of cadaveric (corpse) spasm (instant stiffening of
the body); the signs of corruption and the influencing conditions; the
relationship between postmortem phenomena (body after death) and postmortem
interval (time after death); discovery of postmortem delivery; classification of
the ropes for hanging; the characteristics and influencing conditions of the
ligature mark of hanging (marks form hanging); and the characteristics of
strangulation and its distinction with suicidal hanging.
Other major achievements are: findings in the corpses of drowning and in
deaths caused by pressing and stuffing the mouth and the nose with other
objects; findings in rose teeth related to suffocation; identification of blood
clots before and after death; features of different kinds of knife wounds;
injury before death and postmortem injury; the difference between suicide and
homicide; determination of a fatal trauma; methods of on-the-spot investigation
of different kinds of death; and so on.
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