The Medical Detectives: A Study of Forensic Pathologists

Paperback: 180 pages clean and tight. Product Dimensions: 13.7 x 21.6 cm When unnatural death occurs, the police may need a special type of doctor to help them decide whether the case is homicide, suicide or accident. Professionally known as 'Forensic Pathologists' and a mere fifty in the whole country, they are trained experts in establishing two vital aspects about the body: the cause of death (usually a medical matter); and the manner in which death occurred (of legal concern). In many ways television provides viewers with a (socalled)'comfort entertainment' of solving crime, but very little is known about these medical detectives themselves - how they got into this kind of work; their place in medicine as doctors without patients; the stresses_ of cross-examination in Court; career hazards in case of mistakes; and the ambivalent public image of a select group, coping daily with grisly and polluting work, to remind them every minute that they are merely mortal themselves.This book should interest all branches of the health professions, particularly those whose skills require direct contact with a dead body. It should appeal to a wider public also, who see themselves in an imaginary role as doctors in crime. Some of the things this book will tell you: Can the cause of death really be located outside the body? Can the dead really tell the expert why they died? Is the cadaver really at one and the same time the solution to a riddle and the obstacle to knowledge? Do clinicians really demand bodies without souls? Size: 8vo.