Murder

Murder, intentional or unintentional action, having resulted in the death of another person. M. does not represent a special kind of death and is a legal concept—a crime against life—and is studied by criminal law from various points of view (intent, motives, mitigating circumstances, etc.). The forensic medical expert, during examination in cases of M., must solve diverse questions, the answers to which, as one type of judicial evidence, allow the court to reach a certain decision. In some cases, the expert may be posed a direct question: was there a murder, suicide, or accident? To solve such a question, the expert, besides the data from the autopsy, must also have detailed knowledge of all the circumstances accompanying the death, i.e., must request for study all the materials of the case. The circumstances of the case may in this case have no lesser, and sometimes even greater, importance than the data obtained from the autopsy of the body, especially in those cases when the murderer masks the crime, for example by simulating suicide, trying to hide traces of the crime. This is why the initial examination of the body at the scene of the crime, carefully and thoroughly performed, has exceptional importance. The first question, concerning the cause of death, is scientifically substantiated by the data from the autopsy and necessary additional research (chemical, microscopic, etc.), depending on the type of death. Some types of death may directly indicate M., for example strangulation by hands, while others—drowning, hanging—rarely are murders. In cases of death from injuries, the first question that arises is whether the injury was received while alive or is postmortem. Could the injury have been received in the atonal period, for example during a fall at the moment of sudden death from pathological causes? What is the severity of the injury and which of several injuries caused death? With what instrument was the injury inflicted? Could the deceased have inflicted the injury on himself and in what position was he at the moment the injury was inflicted? Could the deceased have performed independent actions after receiving independent injuries? In each individual specific case, many other questions may also arise. In cases of hanging: the vitality of the ligature mark, its direction, the nature of the loop, the possibility of its independent application given the position of the body and the loop itself, the absence of other injuries or the nature of injuries found on the body, besides the mark (see Hanging). Similar questions may arise in cases of strangulation by loop (see Strangulation). In cases of poisoning—the nature of the poison and the possibility of administering it unnoticed with food, wine. Such poisons as ammonia, carbolic acid, already by virtue of their odor exclude the possibility of poisoning an adult healthy person with them, etc. To list all questions arising during the examination of murders is of course impossible, and they vary in individual cases. The forensic medical expert should remember the basic rule that a complete and correct conclusion can be given only by a thorough analysis of all materials of the case.

M. Uvarov Mikhail Semyonovich (1856-1927), a major hygienist and prominent public figure. Born into a peasant family, he completed his studies at the Medico-Surgical Academy; during his student years U. was arrested and brought to trial on charges of belonging to the organization 'Black Repartition.' After completing his studies, he was forbidden from public and state service and only in 1883 did he manage to become a zemstvo doctor in the Tula province. In 1880 U. moved to service in the Kherson zemstvo as head of the sanitary organization. He remained in this work until 1892, when he was dismissed from service by order of the governor. In the Kherson province U. created one of the model zemstvo sanitary organizations. U. began to publish the first 'Medical Sanitary Chronicle' (from 1890), organized the first medical-nutrition points for transient workers in Russia, published works on the statistics of population morbidity, on various questions of the organization of zemstvo medicine, etc. To this same period belong U.'s well-known appearances at the first Pirogov congresses: on questions of women's medical education, on teaching public medicine in medical faculties, etc. His report at the IV congress 'On the unification of programs for sanitary-statistical research' served as the starting point for the development of the so-called Pirogov classification and nomenclature of diseases. The result of another of his reports was the well-known collective publication of the Pirogov Society 'Zemstvo-Medical Collection' (7 volumes). In 1895 U., by order of the governor, was dismissed from the Tver zemstvo, where he also worked as head of the sanitary bureau (1894-95). In 1896 U. moved to Petersburg, where he showed multifaceted activity. He served as dean and professor of general and school hygiene at the Lesgaft courses, director of hygiene courses at the Society for the Protection of Women's Health, gave lectures at the teacher's institute, at the former Elensky Institute (Institute for the Advancement of Physicians), etc. In 1918 U. moved to Crimea, where he worked in the system of the People's Commissariat of Health of Crimea. From 1921 he headed the department of hygiene at the Crimean University. U. left a large literary legacy. From 1896 to 1918 he edited the official journal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs 'Bulletin of Public Hygiene, Forensic and Practical Medicine,' to which he managed to give scientific and public interest, attracting a number of scientific materials and reviews. U. wrote a number of essays published in various publications ('Kherson Medical Sanitary Chronicle,' 'Bulletin of Public Hygiene,' 'Journal of the Russian Society for the Protection of Public Health,' 'Medical Conversation,' 'Physician,' 'Proceedings of the Pirogov Congresses,' etc.) on questions of zemstvo sanitary organization and medical-sanitary construction, on the study of migratory trades, on population morbidity, etc. Among U.'s major works should be mentioned: 'The Sanitary Condition of the Kherson Province' (Kherson, 1891); 'Protection of the Life and Health of Workers' (together with L. M. Lyalin, Moscow, 1907), as well as several hygiene textbooks.