The History of Forensic Science

The History of Forensic Science

Law Enforcement has used forensic science for years to help solve puzzling crimes. But not to many people know just how long the art of forensic science has been around. For example evidence of fingerprints were found in paintings and prehistoric rock carvings made by humans.

The Chinese have probably used forensics much longer than most civilizations. For example back in the 700's they used fingerprints to find out the identity of documents and clay sculptures. What made this unusual was that there was no form of classification system back then. They were pretty much learning as they went along. They probably helped out today's forensics more than we actually know.

Another step in forensics by the Chinese was in 1248bc a book was written called Hsi Duan Yu- The Washing away of wrongs. This book described in detail the differences found in a human body when someone was strangled compared to when someone had drowned.

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This book is believed to be the first written record of medical forensic science to help solve crimes.

The 1600's were a time in human history where man was coming out of the dark ages and started to concentrate more on science than witchcraft. This is why starting with the 1600's there have been so many leaps forward in forensic science. For instance in 1609 Francios Demelle of France published the first treatise on systematic document examination. In 1686 Marcello Malpighi, who was a professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, documented the different characteristics of fingerprints.

From there the progress in finding new forensic techniques just flourished at an astounding rate. For instance, in 1810 the Germans were the first to record the use of question document analysis. This was a chemical test for a certain type...