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Carl Scheele discovered that he was able to turn arsenic oxide into arsenic acid, producing arsine when mixed with zinc. This discovery led to the eventual ability to detect arsenic poisoning.
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In 1788, when Dr. Nathaniel Grew published an illustrated anatomy book in which he stated that "the arrangement of skin ridges is never duplicated in two persons." the discovery that fingerprints were unique to each individual and could provide identification to a specific individual urged the state of forensic crime investigation to the frontline.
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After he published Traite de Poisons, he became recognized as the Father of Toxicology in 1813. He is the first to be credited with trying to determine blood and semen stains by using a microscope.
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In 1835, the first recorded instance of law enforcement comparing bullets to capture their man was a former Bow Street Runner employed by Scotland Yard. In a bullet that was traced back to the initial bullet mold, Henry Goddard found a defect.
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The first presumptive test for the presence of blood was accidentally found in 1863 by a German scientist named Christian Schonbein, who found that hemoglobin had the potential to oxidize hydrogen peroxide, which caused it to foam.
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In a paper published in the 1880 science journal Nature, Faulds wrote that for "the scientific identification of criminals." bloody fingerprints or impressions on a number of surfaces may be used. Today, this is known as dactylography.
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The use of crime scene images was thoroughly investigated in 1888, during the reign of England's most infamous serial killer, Jack the Ripper, in an attempt to detect clues and criminal profiling of the ruthless murderer. Due to the Ripper's savage modus operandi, Scotland Yard is the first to have tried criminal profiling.
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In the early 1900s, owing to the design and application of new forensic techniques and inventions such as Benzidine, a chemical compound used to create a universal, presumptive blood examination, the field of forensic science achieved important advances.
