Science and law in the time of cholera: the mystery of the biscuits in Torroja (1865)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2018.19Keywords:
Poisoning accidents, forensic cultures, legal medicine, cholera epidemic of 1865, forensic physiciansAbstract
By focussing on a case of collective poisoning in 1865, four features of forensic cultures are analysed: technologies for detection, authorized voices, regulations in action and the predominant social anxieties. Local newspapers and archival documents kept in the medical academies of Barcelona and Madrid are analysed. The analysis shows the tensions between various types of proof employed in legal medicine and the ambiguities between epidemic diseases and poisoning accidents. In the first section, I review the fears caused by the cholera epidemic in 1865, which was the first explanation of the accident. The changes of popular perception are also discussed by analysing contemporary newspapers. I also reconstruct the social anxieties that constrained the judicial investigation and the subsequent work of the experts. I study the lack of economic and manpower support for the development the new organization of forensic physicians and, finally, I review the controversies between doctors and pharmacists regarding the management of the different types of toxicological proofs.
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