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Larvae, Lincolns Bullet and Tiny Corpses: Exhibition |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Wednesday, 22 February 2006 |
By Theresa Barry
Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- ``Night of the Living Dead'' plays on one screen, its screams punctuating another film showing a real autopsy, while polished dissecting instruments gleam in glass cases nearby.
These pleasant offerings come from ``Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body,'' an exhibition opening today at the National Library of Medicine. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, 10 miles north of Washington, the library has put together items from the 1600s to the ``CSI'' television series that trace how science has interpreted death for the legal system.
The first fingerprint used to convict a woman of murder in 1892 is here. So is the first DNA sample used to exonerate a convicted murderer. You can find some of the autopsy tools used to dissect the path of the assassin's bullet that bored through President Abraham Lincoln's skull.
``The human body in death ... causes all kinds of emotions in the living -- of grief, anger, nausea,'' said Michael Sappol, the exhibit's curator. ``It also demands that we make some kind of narrative or explanation.''
It doesn't necessarily take a strong stomach to watch an autopsy or examine blowfly larvae of the sort that helped determine when a Connecticut woman died. Sappol, a cultural historian, said his teenagers, ages 12 and 16, were fascinated.
Insect Development
``It's a familiar story now to most people, the stages of insect development and how people can use that to estimate time of death,'' Sappol said. Mystery writer ``Patricia Cornwell's done a good job of that.''
So has CBS Corp.'s ``CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,'' the top-rated U.S. television show, whose main character is fascinated with insects and what they reveal about a crime.
``I'd never seen an episode of `CSI' when I proposed this about three years ago,'' Sappol said in the Feb. 10 interview. The library bought the first three seasons ``for the collection and I studied it.''
If the library's exhibition doesn't evoke a shudder, head to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, a part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, a tri-service Army, Navy, and Air Force facility in Washington. There, a cheerful docent will point out a foot-long hairball removed from a 12- year-old girl and hand around a real liver and intestines preserved and kept in translucent plastic bins.
Lincoln Bullet
The museum, established in 1862 to gather medical samples for study, has more than 24 million specimens. Its collection holds the bullet fired at Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth and fragments of the president's skull. The institution lent some of its materials to ``Visible Proofs,'' Sappol said. The items include the heart of a young man with a visible bullet wound.
``I have seen the bullet that John Wilkes Booth shot into Lincoln's brain,'' said James Swanson, who wrote the just- released book ``Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killers.''
The National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, is the world's largest medical library, with a collection of more than 7 million items.
A keen interest in forensics led International Harvester heiress Frances Glessner Lee to have 18 crime scenes from the 1940s meticulously reproduced in miniature. The ``Visible Proofs'' exhibit boasts a few of these glass-fronted dollhouse scenes. One has a tiny pink bathroom rug, a curtained vanity and a body sprawled on the floor. A scaled-down barn with weathered wood and shingles holds a hanged man.
Body Farms
Sappol said he was allowed to borrow the re-creations only if he promised not to reveal the solutions to visitors. The ``Nutshell Studies,'' as they're known, are still used for training investigators by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Maryland.
The exhibit also highlights the work begun in the 19th century by Mathieu Orfila, a Parisian medical professor whose study of body decomposition laid the groundwork for today's so- called body farms, where decomposing bodies are examined. He also studied poisons, which became a more popular murder weapon in the Industrial Age.
A clip of ``Night of the Living Dead,'' the 1968 horror film, plays midway through the exhibit. Sappol said the movie broke taboos about showing dead bodies.
``Ignore those screams,'' he said.
In the 1800s, forensics shifted its focus from the victim's body to the suspect, Sappol said, moving to another exhibit area.
He pointed to a photo of the work of Alphonse Bertillon, the obsessive Parisian records clerk whose files led to the system of front and side-view mug shots and logging of physical details in use today.
The work of forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow puts a sobering coda to the displays. He helped to identify bodies from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and to provide evidence from Argentinean mass graves to convict junta leaders in 1985. He spoke at the exhibit opening today, after National Library of Medicine Director Donald Lindberg cut the crime-scene tape, a museum spokeswoman said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000088&sid=asudlCot3i_4&refer=culture |
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