A brief history of forensic entomology
Introduction
Hundreds of arthropod species are attracted by corpses, primarily flies (Diptera), beetles (Coleoptera), and their larvae, and also mites, isopods, opiliones, and nematodes. These animals feed, live, or breed in and on the corpse, depending on their biological preferences and on the state of decompostion (e.g. [1], [24], [38], [43], [46], [59], [69], [63], [74], [82], [103]).
Since arthropods are by far the largest and most important biological group on Earth (they outnumber even plants), they can be found in a wide variety of locations including crime scenes. This opens a wide range of applications for forensic entomology, the investigation of insects and other arthropods recovered from crime scenes and corpses.
The following article gives a brief review of the historic sources describing the development that led to the present state of the art. An attached bibliography1 both documents the earliest efforts made in the field and facilitates access to early studies, research results, and case reports.
Section snippets
Medieval China to 19th century
The first documented forensic entomology case is reported by the Chinese lawyer and death investigator Sung Tźu in the 13th century in the medico-legal text book Hsi yüan chi lu (one possible translation: “The Washing Away of Wrongs”) [97], [98]. He describes the case of a stabbing near a rice field. The day after the murder, the investigator told all workers to lay down their working tools (sickles) on the floor. Invisible traces of blood drew blow flies to a single sickle. So confronted, the
Early cases from France
During mass exhumations in France and Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries, medico-legal doctors observed that buried bodies are inhabited by arthropods of many kinds. In 1831, the famous French medical doctor Orfila observed a large number of exhumations [79], [80]. He understood that maggots play an important role in the decomposition of corpses (Fig. 4).
The first modern forensic entomology case report to include an estimation of postmortem interval (PMI) was given by the French doctor
Further mass exhumations
On 6 April 1881, the German medical doctor Reinhard reported the first systematic study in forensic entomology [85]. Dealing with exhumated bodies from Saxonia, he collected mainly Phorid flies taxonomically identified by the entomologist Brauer in Vienna. He also described beetles in graves older than 15 years. In some instances, he found the insects breeding within cracks of adipocire. But Reinhard concluded that their presence may have more to do with their feeding on plant roots protruding
Turn of the century
Previous forensic insect studies by the German doctors Klingelhöffer [51] and Maschka [58], and the forensic pathologist Stefan von Horoskiewicz from Krakau University (then Austria, now Poland) [44], had focused on the bite patterns of cockroaches and ants. Klingelhöffer, a district medical doctor responsible for the Frankfurt area, relates the case of a poor family whose 9-month-old sickly baby died on 26 May 1889, and was autopsied 3 days later, on 29 May. In the meantime, the local “doctor
Circa the World Wars
Beginning in the 1920s, species lists and monographs on forensically important insects were finally published (e.g. [38], [53], [84], [91]), with a focus on ecology, metabolism or anatomy, e.g. [8], [14], [19], [20], [22], [23], [24], [25], [27], [31], [32], [33], [34], [39], [40], [46], [50], [52], [57], [66], [67], [68], [70], [71], [72], [81], [83], [84], [93], [94], [100], [101], [102], [104], [105], [106], [107], [108], [111], [112]; see also [6], [26]. Pest control, and “maggot therapy”
After the World Wars
During the 1940s, only a note of Bequaert seems to deal with the use of insects to determine the postmortem interval [4], but see also [30]. In the 1950s, Hubert Caspers from the Zoological Institute and Museum of the State Hamburg introduced the use of caddis-fly casings as a tool for forensic investigation (Fig. 8). The body of a dead woman, naked except of a pair of red socks, and wrapped in a sack, had been found in 1948 in a moat of a windmill [16]. The question was if the body was
Final remarks
Between the 1960s and mid-1980s, forensic entomology was maintained primarily by medical doctor Marcel Leclecq (Belgium) [55], [56] and professor of biology Pekka Nuorteva (first, Helsinki Zoological Museum, later, professor at the Department of Environmental Protection and Conservation, University of Helsinki, Finland) [77], [78], with a focus on case work.
Since then, basic research and advanced application of forensic entomology in the US [4], Russia [3], Canada [1], France and Japan [2] as
Acknowledgements
Pekka Nuorteva and Marcel Leclercq contributed to this article by generous gifts of reprints of their papers. The librarians of the Central German Library of Medicine (ZBMed, http://www.zbmed.de/), Cologne, and the Ehrmann Library, New York University (NYU) Medical Center (http://library.med.nyu.edu/), as well as Madelaine Nash from the former library of the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, Manhattan, helped to trace the historic sources for this article. Proof-reading was partially performed
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