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John Evangelist Purkinji, a professor of anatomy at the University of Breslau, Czechoslovakia, published the first paper on the nature of fingerprints and suggested a classification system based on nine major types. However, he failed to recognize their individualizing potential.
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William Nichol invented the polarizing light microscope.
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Leuch’s first noted amylase activity in human saliva.
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Henry Goddard, one of Scotland Yard’s original Bow Street Runners, first used bullet comparison to catch a murderer. His comparison was based on a visible flaw in the bullet which was traced back to a mold.
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James Marsh, a Scottish chemist, was the first to use toxicology (arsenic detection) in a jury trial.
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H. Bayard published the first reliable procedures for the microscopic detection of sperm. He also noted the different microscopic characteristics of various substrate fabrics.
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Jean Servais Stas, a chemistry professor from Brussels, Belgium, was the first successfully to identify vegetable poisons in body tissue.
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Ludwig Teichmann, in Krakow, Poland, developed the first microscopic crystal test for hemoglobin using hemin crystals.
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An English physician, Maddox, developed dry plate photography, eclipsing M. Daguerre’s wet plate on tin method. This made practical the photographing of inmates for prison records.
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Sir William Herschel, a British officer working for the Indian Civil service, began to use thumbprints on documents both as a substitute for written signatures for illiterates and to verify document signatures.
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The Dutch scientist J. (Izaak) Van Deen developed a presumptive test for blood using guaiac, a West Indian shrub.
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The German scientist Schönbein first discovered the ability of hemoglobin to oxidize hydrogen peroxide making it foam. This resulted in first presumptive test for blood.
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Odelbrecht first advocated the use of photography for the identification of criminals and the documentation of evidence and crime scenes.
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Thomas Taylor, microscopist to U.S. Department of Agriculture suggested that markings of the palms of the hands and the tips of the fingers could be used for identification in criminal cases. Although reported in the American Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science and Scientific American, the idea was apparently never pursued from this source.
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Rudolph Virchow, a German pathologist was one of the first to both study hair and recognize its limitations.
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Henry Faulds, a Scottish physician working in Tokyo, published a paper in the journal Nature suggesting that fingerprints at the scene of a crime could identify the offender. In one of the first recorded uses of fingerprints to solve a crime, Faulds used fingerprints to eliminate an innocent suspect and indicate a perpetrator in a Tokyo burglary.