ABSTRACT
We could never hope to cover all aspects of the history of forensic science here, but we can address the highlights that will help you understand how forensic science began, how it evolved, and how it developed into the diverse field that it has become today. Most chapters will also cover history of that particular subject to round out your knowledge. The reference section at the end of the chapters lists several books that discuss the history of forensic science in detail. Forensic science arose out of other sciences such as biology, chemistry, medicine, and pharmacology (how drugs and poisons interact with the body). An important early driving force was death investigation, which we will examine in Section III, Chapters 5, 6, and 7. This history of death investigation is surprisingly long. Consider the following commonsense advice quoted from a forensic text:
There is nothing remarkable about this passage, except that it was written in 1247 CE and was printed in a book in China entitled (translated) The Washing Away of Wrongs. Although the investigation of death was only one motivating force in the development of forensic science, it certainly was one of the most important.
