The Case of the Peculiar Story: Medical Investigation and the Detective in Edgar Allan Poe and Marguerite Duras.

In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), Poe invents the detective story in English, introducing his gentleman sleuth Auguste Dupin as he solves the locked-room mystery of two women found brutally murdered in a Paris apartment. In L'Amante Anglaise (1967), Duras revisits the detective form, fictionalizing the true 1949 crime of a woman murdering and dismembering her cousin in Viorne, France. These literary detective stories highlight the powerful but unspoken role of affective experience in driving what appears, on the surface, to be a forensic medical or psychological investigation. In both tales, peculiarity is an affective and cognitive force that, contrary to what the majority of affect literature argues, inherently moves toward resolution and closure. Using peculiarity as an analytical concept, we argue that the concealment / discovery binary must acknowledge its affective origins, breaking a barrier between narrative scholarship and medical practice.

The phylogenetic roots of human lethal violence.

The psychological, sociological and evolutionary roots of conspecific violence in humans are still debated, despite attracting the attention of intellectuals for over two millennia. Here we propose a conceptual approach towards understanding these roots based on the assumption that aggression in mammals, including humans, has a significant phylogenetic component. By compiling sources of mortality from a comprehensive sample of mammals, we assessed the percentage of deaths due to conspecifics and, using phylogenetic comparative tools, predicted this value for humans. The proportion of human deaths phylogenetically predicted to be caused by interpersonal violence stood at 2%. This value was similar to the one phylogenetically inferred for the evolutionary ancestor of primates and apes, indicating that a certain level of lethal violence arises owing to our position within the phylogeny of mammals. It was also similar to the percentage seen in prehistoric bands and tribes, indicating that we were as lethally violent then as common mammalian evolutionary history would predict. However, the level of lethal violence has changed through human history and can be associated with changes in the socio-political organization of human populations. Our study provides a detailed phylogenetic and historical context against which to compare levels of lethal violence observed throughout our history.

A Reevaluation of the Death of Vincent van Gogh: Suicide or Murder? The Need for a Definitive Autopsy.

Vincent van Gogh died on July 29, 1890, from an apparent gunshot wound to the belly sustained approximately 30 hours earlier on July 27. Although little is known how Vincent sustained his mortal wound, art historians have long believed that the death was the result of a suicide, a widely accepted "truth" for the mysterious death of the then unknown and now iconic artist. The basis and validity of this suicide narrative is still very hotly debated among van Gogh scholars to this day. We dug deeper into all the circumstantial evidence and testimonies to arrive at a comprehensive overview of the probability that it was likely impossible for Vincent to self-inflict his mortal wound.We used all the available circumstantial evidence related to the day Vincent van Gogh was wounded to present the information and conclusions as if we were before a judge as expert witnesses to answer the question: suicide or murder? If Vincent did not shoot himself in the belly (a red flag in and of itself), whoever inflicted that penetrating wound into his abdomen murdered him. In our study, results from firing the same model revolver that allegedly killed Vincent from various ranges (direct contact, intermediate, and distant) demonstrated within a reasonable degree of medical probability (greater than 50%) that it was not probable for Vincent van Gogh to shoot himself without a described powder burn.With little forensic evidence to rely on 130 years after the suspicious event, many have suggested a respectful exhumation and graveside autopsy utilizing 21 century techniques to bring resolve to this 19 century cold case. This crime, whether suicide or murder, has generated renewed interest and numerous questions surrounding the suspicious death of the most iconic artist of the 19th century. These missing forensic facts will remain buried with all the secrets Vincent took with him to his grave, unless a definitive autopsy is performed. What an autopsy could add to our forensic fact basis and understanding of this intriguing cold case is enormous and further delineated as the next step to answer these difficult, otherwise unanswerable questions and allow us to finally sign off on his death certificate with certainty.It is clearly impossible to definitively prove suicide or murder, but it is also impossible to disprove murder given the data and arguments offered in this analysis. A physician's opinion is based on the material available to him, and in this case, "our opinion as to the cause and manner of death is based on the limited amount of forensic information available. It is, therefore, our opinion, based on that limited information that in all medical probability, the cause of death is not a self-inflicted wound by Vincent van Gogh, and, thus, in all medical probability, a homicide."

The brutal events on Houtman Abrolhos following the wreck of the Batavia in 1629.

The flagship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the Batavia, was wrecked on the morning of the 4th of June 1629 on an isolated reef of the Houtman Abrolhos islands off the coast of Western Australia. The majority of crew and passengers (180-250, including 30 women and children) were able to reach an island which they called Batavia's Graveyard (now known as Beacon Island). After the commander, Francisco Pelsaert, sailed to Batavia for help, Jeronimus Cornelisz took control. Over the next several months his men raped and murdered at least 125 captive shipwrecked passengers and crew. Upon Pelsaert's return Cornelisz and the ringleaders were tried, had their hands severed, and were executed by hanging. Recent archeological excavations have revealed the nature of the attacks and provided scientific validation of some of the alleged incidents. The Batavia mutiny represents a particularly heinous mass murder in the annals of Australia's maritime history.

Sigmund Freud and Martin Pappenheim.

During World War I, Martin Pappenheim, as a young doctor in the field of neurology and psychiatry, studied various possible consequences of war traumas, perhaps as part of a wider project of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's army. He visited military hospitals, sanatoriums and prisons, and between February and June 1916, while residing in Terezin, he had several opportunities to talk with Gavrilo Princip, who was imprisoned there. Princip was a young Bosnian Serb who had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. There is written evidence of Pappenheim's conversations with Princip; they were first published in Vienna 1926. My article is concerned with the possibility of Pappenheim's influence on the later development of Freud's theory.

The art of surgery.

, Published online in Wiley Online Library (www.bjs.co.uk). DOI: 10.1002/bjs.10863 In times when art usually depicted perfection, Caravaggio (1571-1610) painted everyday reality. He used people walking the streets of Rome to represent holy figures. Caravaggio loved many women. He killed a man in a duel and had to flee from Rome to avoid being 'beheaded by anybody who saw him'. In this biblical scene he painted, Judith Beheading Holofernes, Judith is a portrait of Fillide Melandroni, the reason for the duel. Holofernes is a self-portrait. Judith looks cruel, in mourning clothes, seeking revenge for the assassination of her lover. The maidservant, almost an evil spirit, has a voluminous thyroid goitre, and she seems to encourage the revenge of Fillide. Read more about Caravaggio and this painting in an essay online.

The Unique and Misunderstood Wound Ballistics in the John F. Kennedy Assassination.

President Kennedy sustained 2 gunshot wounds on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, while riding in the right-rear seat of the presidential limousine. The convertible top was down, and no special ballistic protection for the occupants was present.The ballistic events in the assassination and subsequent ballistic evidence were not fully understood then and continue to be misunderstood and often misrepresented today. These facts are largely the consequence of the very uncommon wound ballistic properties of the 6.5-mm Carcano bullets associated with the President's gunshot wounds and the visual responses of the President to his 2 gunshot wounds so often viewed in the 8-mm Zapruder film.An understanding of the wound ballistic characteristics associated with the John F. Kennedy assassination also applies to certain contemporary bullets. Such an understanding could assist forensic pathologists in future cases in evaluating and correctly interpreting gunshot wounds associated with these types of bullets.

[Werner Heyde: psychiatrist and mass murderer : A forensic psychiatric perspective]. / Werner Heyde: Psychiater und Massenmörder : Eine forensisch-psychiatrische Perspektive.

In 1962 the Frankfurt Attorney General Dr. Fritz Bauer, who became known worldwide through the Auschwitz Trials, charged the ex-director of the psychiatric and neurological clinic of the University of Würzburg, Prof. Dr. Werner Heyde, in his bill of indictment with murder in at least 100,000 cases. The trial planned for February 1964 was awaited with great interest by the media. However, it never took place, because Heyde, who went under the pseudonym Dr. Fritz Sawade in the postwar period, committed suicide shortly beforehand. In the years 1940/1941 Heyde was head assessor and medical director of the so-called Action T4 and, therefore, one of the main perpetrators of the mass murder of sick and disabled people known under the euphemism of euthanasia. Long before his involvement in the mass murder programme, Heyde already contributed to the disastrous development in Germany with a positive psychiatric expert opinion on Theodor Eicke, who later became the Inspector of Concentration Camps (KZ) and head of the SS Death's Head Units. Furthermore, Heyde became an instructor of KZ physicians. This article focuses on Heyde's successful career at the University of Würzburg from 1926-1945, taking sources that confirm Heyde's homosexual propensities into account, suggesting a recurrent conflictual influence on his life.

Amok: a mirror of time and people. A historical review of literature.

The conceptualization of psychiatric disorders changes continuously. This study examined 'amok', a culture-bound syndrome related to sudden mass homicide, to elucidate changing and varied concepts. A historical review of 88 English articles revealed that the meanings and assumed causes of amok have changed over time. These changes appear to have been affected by social events, medical discoveries, knowledge of descriptors and occasionally, the benefit to users. In other words, the concept of amok changes depending on the history of society and the knowledge and intention of people at the time. We should consider in detail what we focus on when diagnosing a disorder.

Les expertises dans l'affaire Lafarge ou la fabrique du doute.

This paper focuses on the role of expertise in the trial of Marie Lafarge, accused of poisoning and killing her husband Charles Pouch-Lafarge on 14 January 1840. Historians have argued that testimonial evidence remained dominant in French criminal law throughout the nineteenth century, thus minimizing the part taken by expert testimony. Lafarge's case provides an opportunity to revisit this claim. Instead of generating certainty, expert opinion in this case created doubt and opened up new questions. Despite the contradictions of expert opinion, Lafarge was convicted. Doubt has been little discussed in the scholarship on expertise, but it is more frequently invoked in the context of agnotology - the making of culturally induced ignorance. The controversy surrounding the Lafarge case serves to illuminate the mechanisms by which doubt could arise, how people reacted to it, and how doubt was configured within an emerging medicolegal expertise.

L'article s'intéresse au rôle de l'expertise dans le procès de Marie Lafarge, laquelle est accusée d'avoir empoisonné et tué son mari, Charles Pouch-Lafarge, le 14 janvier 1840. Les historiens qui ont travaillé sur l'évolution de la justice en France ont beaucoup insisté sur le fait que les preuves testimoniales sont restées dominantes dans la pratique française du droit pénal tout au long du 19e siècle, minimisant ainsi la part prise par les experts et les expertises. Nous réexaminons, à travers le procès Lafarge, le statut et la place accordée à l'expertise dans la première moitié du 19e siècle. Cette affaire est intéressante en ce que, loin de produire des certitudes, les expertises produisent surtout du doute et ouvrent de nouvelles interrogations. Cette question du doute a été peu abordée dans la littérature sur l'expertise ou alors elle surgit dans le cadre de l'agnotologie, laquelle s'intéresse surtout à la fabrique de l'ignorance. Or, malgré les contradictions qui surgissent entre les différents experts, Marie Lafarge est finalement condamnée. Il s'agit, à travers l'étude des controverses médico-légales, de suivre le cheminement du doute, la manière dont il surgit et surtout la façon dont les différents acteurs se positionnent face à lui.

The gold rush and afterwards: Homicide in San Francisco, 1849-2003.

We compared the characteristics of homicide in San Francisco during the Gold Rush epidemic (1849-1860) to the characteristics of homicides during a more recent epidemic (1965-1980), and during a period when the homicide rates were relatively low (1921-1964). The data were based on reports from coroners, newspapers, the San Francisco Police Department, and the census. Time period was used to predict the characteristics of each incident in our multivariate analyses. The evidence suggests that the homicide epidemic during the gold rush was primarily due to a higher incidence of disputes between unrelated persons, including duels and disputes over land, mining claims, and gambling. The offenders during this period were more likely to be males who were armed and intoxicated. The epidemic did not involve particularly high rates of predatory or domestic violence, suggesting that it was unrelated to a general decline in social control. We suggest that the gold rush epidemic in San Francisco was due to an increase in the number of disputes between intoxicated men.

The remains at Lethbridge's Pocket - the case against the Kenniff brothers.

On 30th March 1902 Police Constable George Doyle and Carnarvon Station manager Albert Dahlke were allegedly gunned down at Lethbridge's Pocket in Central Queensland. Approximately 90 kg of ash and burnt human remains with articles belonging to the two men were later found in saddle bags left at the scene on a police horse. Subsequently two local cattle and horse thieves, Patrick and James Kenniff, were convicted in the Queensland Supreme Court of the wilful murder of Constable Doyle. Patrick was executed by hanging on 12th January 1903 and James had his sentence reduced to life imprisonment with hard labor. A number of irregularities were subsequently raised about the trial including the use of a "special" jury and the reliability of evidence from a witness who did not actually see the event. Forensic issues to be explored involve the accuracy of the descriptions of the carbonized material, whether the remains were actually those of Doyle and Dahlke, and whether the victims were dismembered before burning, as was alleged by the prosecution.

[Tragedy in the Valley Jaworowa: incredible coincidence or perfect murder?]

The paper presents the case of an unexplained and the most mysterious death in the history of Polish Tatra tourism. It concerns three people of different ages and occurred on August 3, 1925 in the Valley of Jaworowa. Kazimierz Kasznica, his son Waclaw Kasznica and a newly discovered mountaineer Ryszard Wasserberger died suddenly for unknown reasons in 15 minutes during a mountain trek. This story is interesting due to the mysterious, simultaneous death of three people of different ages and due to the fact that Waleria Kasznica - the wife of Kazimierz and the mother of Waclaw Kasznica survived the journey. KEY WORDS.

Computed Tomography Study of the Feet of Mummy of Ramesses III: New Insights on the Harem Conspiracy.

OBJECTIVE: A previous study of the computed tomography (CT) of the neck of mummified Ramesses III (1190-1070 BC) suggested that an assailant slit the Pharaoh's throat with a knife in the plot known as Harem conspiracy. We hypothesized the presence of other injuries in the Pharaoh's body as a result of this fatal attack. METHODS: We analyzed CT images of mummified Ramesses III and reported any finding suggestive of trauma in correlation with archeologic literature. RESULTS: Computed tomographic images show partially amputated left big toe. The bony edges are sharp without signs of attempted healing. The ancient embalmers replaced the missing toe with a linen-made prosthesis and placed 6 metallic amulets (eye of Horus) at the feet region. CONCLUSIONS: The Pharaoh's left big toe was likely chopped perimortem by an assailant using a heavy sharp instrument as an ax. This additional injury supports the plot and gives more information about the death scene.

Lessons Learned from 50 Years of Violence Prevention Activities in the African American Community.

PURPOSE: This article covers violence prevention (homicide and suicide) activities in the African American community for nearly 50 years. METHOD: Drawing on lived experience the works of early and recent efforts by African American physicians, the author illustrates we know a great deal about violence prevention in the African American community. RESULTS: There remains challenges of implementation and political will. Further, most physicians, like the public, are confused about the realities of homicide and suicide because of the two different presentations both are given in the media and scientific literature. CONCLUSIONS: Responses to homicide and suicides should be based on science not distorted media reports. There are violence prevention principles that, if widely implemented, could stem the tide of violence.

Mass killing under the guise of ECT: the darkest chapter in the history of biological psychiatry.

Following its inception, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), rapidly spread all over the world, including Nazi Germany. Paradoxically, at the same time, the euthanasia programme was started in Germany: the extermination of people with intellectual disabilities and severe psychiatric disorders. In Lower Austria, Dr Emil Gelny, who had been granted a specialist qualification in psychiatry after three months of clinical training, took control of two psychiatric hospitals, in Gugging and Mauer-Öhling. In 1944, he began systematically killing patients with an ECT machine, something that was not practised anywhere else before or after, and remains unprecedented in the history of convulsive therapy. He modified an ECT machine, adding extra electrodes, which he fastened onto a victim's wrists and ankles to administer lethal electric shocks.

The Port Arthur massacre and the National Firearms Agreement: 20 years on, what are the lessons?

The 20th anniversary of the National Firearms Agreement (NFA) offers lessons for mental health and public health. Along with similar international legislation, the NFA exemplifies how firearms regulation can prevent firearm mortality and injuries. The gun lobby claims that mental illness underpins gun violence and should be a key site for intervention. A modest but significant link exists between mental disorders and community violence. However, the vast majority of mentally ill individuals are not violent. Despite media portrayals of their dangerousness, they are more likely to be victims of violence and of suicide. Most violent individuals do not have mental illness, and most mass murderers do not have identifiable severe mental illness. Many have maladaptive personality configurations. Gun availability and gun ownership, not severe mental illness, determines most gun homicides. Following recent gun massacres in the United States, there have been calls for better resourcing of mental health services to help identify and respond to those at risk and to regulate firearms access. Screening mentally ill populations for violence risk is misguided. However, clinicians can play a key role in working with legal authorities to monitor and assist regulation of firearm access, especially among high risk populations. Clinician involvement must be complemented by wider gun control measures. The gun lobby's turning the firearms availability debate into a question about whether people with mental illness histories should access such weapons is a calculated appeal to prejudice.