A Review of Modern Legal Medicine, Psychiatry, and Forensic Science

Abstract

Abstract “Where does a 3050-g, 7.5-cm-thick textbook come to rest? Anywhere it wants to,” to paraphrase the old joke—but preferably, for this book, on the ready reference shelf of every pathologist who does forensic science cases, and certainly in the library of every forensic pathology training program. The authors of this weighty compendium state that it is “the first comprehensive single volume work covering the entire field of legal medicine and the allied forensic sciences.” Although it may not live up to that claim of universality, it does appear to be the first major single-volume textbook on forensic pathology and forensic science in this country since the classic 1954 edition of Gonzales et al (not counting Professor Camps' updates of Gradwohl [1968 and 1976], which are British in orientation, nor the recent multivolume work of Tedeschi et al [1977]).