Two cases of homicidal corrosive poisoning: once upon a time

Abstract

The Institute of Forensic Medicine, as part of the School of Medicine at University of Belgrade, was officially founded in 1923 by Professor Milovan Milovanovic (1884–1948). In addition to several medical textbooks, he also published 48 papers in Serbian, German, and French medical journals [1]. Several of his papers were published in a German medical journal Sammlung von Vergiftungsfallen, now called Archives of Toxicology. In one of these, he published the epidemiological data and the incidence of lethal corrosive poisoning in Belgrade, for the period 1922–1933, taking into consideration the manner of death [2] (Fig. 1). In a table from this papers he described two cases of homicidal corrosive poisoning, one in 1928 and one in 1929 (Fig. 2). Professor Milovanovic collected data about his forensic autopsy cases meticulously. In large notebooks marked as Suicides, Homicides, and Accidents, there were sheets for each year, with table and rows and columns filled with handwritten data of interest: age and gender of deceased, data about the circumstances of the event, the mental condition of deceased, chronic illnesses, etc.—hand written equivalents of modern-day excel-documents. From one of these notebooks we are able to identify the two cases of homicidal corrosive poisoning listed in the published manuscript and described below [2]. Case Outline 1