Recent Advances in Forensic Pathology

Abstract

Any volume entitled Recent Advances... directly raises the question of the readers to whom it is directed—those in that specialty or those whose interests are tangential thereto. This volume is based, the editor says, on lectures to pathologists serving as coroners part-time, in short, to those with interests tangential to the field of forensic pathology. What are the needs of such persons? Surely, for them chapters on establishing death (its existence, not its causes), early diagnosis of myocardial infarction (what pathologist is not well acquainted with efforts in this?) or a few pages on addictive drugs are superfluous. What part-time forensic pathologists geniunely require is thorough review of those bases to which little attention ordinarily is paid in hospital pathology. In the latter the clinical history is of major aid, and what is assigned as the cause of death is usually of little financial or legal importance. In forensic pathology,