The Case of the Spurious Spinster

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Few people realize how important the skilled forensic pathologist is to the individual and to society, how necessary it is that citizens understand the importance of legal medicine.

Even you who are reading this might find yourself accused of a murder you hadn’t committed and in a case where the “victim” actually had died a natural death. You might even be convicted if the “crime” occurred in a jurisdiction where the Coroner’s Office has no skilled pathologist available.

My friend, Richard O. Myers, MD, to whom I am dedicating this book, is a specialist in forensic pathology. He is highly skilled, thoroughly competent, and he can and does, from time to time, tell his intimates about actual cases that illustrate the point I am making.

The average medical doctor is no more competent to perform an autopsy in a puzzling case than an ice skater is qualified to execute a ski jump.

The physician and surgeon specializes in saving the lives of the living. He has to know the physiology and the psychology of his patients. He has to keep abreast of all the new developments in medicine. He knows all about the so-called wonder drugs and, if he is on his toes, he is properly skeptical, so that he keeps a keen eye open for unexpected side effects and individual allergies when he uses some of the new drugs which are being perfected. He has to understand literally thousands of symptoms so that he can evaluate them and make a differential diagnosis. In short, he has his hands so full caring for the living he has little time to study the dead.

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