Technologies

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Murder the Result of Various Injuries, 1898
Suicide by Cutting the Throat, 1898
Encircling Gunshot-wound in Brain, 1898
Carbonic-oxide [carbon monoxide] Poisoning with agonal injuries due to a fall, 1898
Suicide through Stabbing, 1898
Bloodstain, blisters, bullet holes, 1864
Head and hand of a drownee, 1864
Decomposed stomach, 1864
Rope marks and upper thigh, 1864
The color of the lungs of dead newborn children: stillborn, newborn who have taken a breath, newborn whose lungs have been artificially inflated, 1864
Suicide by Cutting the Throat, 1898
Suicide by Cutting the Throat, 1898
Plate 16. Suicide by Cutting the Throat. The case was that of a young man in his twentieth year, who cut his throat in his room with a sharpened pocket-knife. He was found dead, on his back, in a moderate-sized pool of blood, his right hand covered with blood, and beside this a bloody pocket-knife. After cleansing the body the skin was not especially anemic, the post-mortem lividity fairly well developed, the visible mucous membranes not particularly pale, the wound of the neck running transversely from the middle of one sterno-cleido-mastoid muscle to the other.... [D]eath was not due to a fatal hemorrhage, but resulted from suffocation consequent upon entrance of the blood from the wound into the larynx and the lower respiratory passages.
Eduard Ritter von Hofmann, M.D., Atlas of Legal Medicine, Philadelphia, chromolithograph; Artist A. Schmitson
National Library of Medicine
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The 19th-century revolution in forensic imaging

In the 19th century, forensic pathologists began using pictures and words to show how various conditions appear in the cadaver, and to teach students and colleagues new methods of analysis. Line drawings, half-tone photography, and chromolithography, which could render coloration, texture, and subtle shading, became increasingly common as improvements in print technology made detailed illustrations cheaper to produce.