Lecture #2 | Historical Perspectives and Key Milestones

Death and Flies in the Ancient World

1. Insects have always been associated with death 

   1. ex: ancient egyptians believed that amulets depicted flies would protect the body from deconstruction 

      1. flies took care of soft body parts while egyptians preserved the heart and the remaining parts of an individual 

“Fly on the wall”

Roman Plautus (playwright) coined, showing that flies are always there 

Sung Tz

Death investigator, physician, and High Court Judge during Song Dynasty in China.

• Father of forensic science

“Washing Away the Wrongs”

Written by Sung Tz’u

• Argues for modern forensic techniques

• 1st training manual in forensic techniques (death scene investigation)

• First written record of forensic entomology by recognizing the role that insects had in death

Case of the Telltale Sickle

First written record of forensic entomology

• Story from “Washing Away of Wrongs” 

• Tells the story of insects detecting removed blood on a murder weapon 

Francisco Redi

Disproved spontaneous generation

• Prior to Redi, people believed that insects grew from rotting meat

Redi’s experiment

• Placed a piece of meat in 3 jars 

  • Open

    • Insects got to meat and maggots on the meet 

  • Covered with gauze

    • Interested in meat but couldn't get to it 

    • Maggots on the gauze 

  • Covered with parchment

    • No flies attracted, no maggots  

Mathieu Orfila

French pathologist who determined that insect species visit corpses.

• Records 30 insect species that visit and feed on human corpses

• Documents succession

  • Replacement of one insect group with another through stages of decomp 

  • Notices blowflies first, flesh flies

    • Beetles (2nd colonizers) 

Louis Bergeret (1855)

Swiss physician-first application of forensic entomology

• Might make an opinion as to why someone died 

• “Baby behind the mantle”

  • Mummified child's body was brought to Bergeret 

  • Noticed mites on body are late colonizers (after mummification)

    • Flesh flies → pupal stage → emerged as adult flies

    • Determined with mummification and adult late colonizers, child died 2 years prior

Jean Pierre Mégnin (1894)

French Veterinarian that studies insect succession on corpses

does this over various decomposition cycles and corpse locations 

• notices predictable pattern of insect succession

  • related to decomp process  

Father of forensic entomology that wrote that a time of death can be determined by insect section

Fresh stage (Mégnin) insects

Blue bottle flies, house fly

Early decomposition (Megin)

Green bottle flies, flesh flies

Late Decomp (Megnin)

Beetles

Desiccation (Megnin)

Mites

“Bodies under the Bridge”

Gruesome discovery of body parts wrapped in newspaper 

• Using new fingerprinting and forensic techniques that bodies were later identified as wife and maid of medical doctor 

• Maggots on body determined 12-14 days of death 

Adel Kamal (1958)

Compared the development of 13 species of blow flies and flesh flies under different temperature conditions

• determined that insect development is related to temperature

Bernard Greenberg (1970’s-1980’s)

1. Applied knowledge of fly biology and behavior as expert witness in numerous homicide investigation 

2. First time someone went to court to give forensic entomology evidence 

3. Flies “have noses better than bloodhounds” 

Bill Bass and the “Body Farm” (1980’s)

1. Forensic Anthropologist at University of Tennessee 

   1. Categorized decomposition of human body into stages that we will use later in the course to better understand insect succession on a corpse

   2. Creating a “body farm” (research facility) to study decomposition