Forensic Pluralism and the Dead Body in Early 20th-Century China

Abstract

Modern forensic medicine was introduced into China during the first decades of the 20th century. The members of China’s first generation of medicolegal experts were soon advocating that medical expertise play a greater role in police and judicial officials’ investigations of suspicious death and homicide cases. While forensic reform in China had parallels with developments in other contemporary societies in which physicians were pushing for a greater role in the law, this process unfolded in China in unique ways, against the backdrop of an older tradition of forensic science that had developed under the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Central to this tradition was the Records on the Washing Away of Wrongs, a handbook of forensic practice that was written in the 13th century and saw numerous editions and expansions over subsequent centuries. Death investigation in early 20th-century China was defined by “forensic pluralism,” a situation in which the different body examination methods and standards of forensic proof associated with the Washing Away of Wrongs and modern forensic medicine were both accepted by officialdom and society. This article untangles the complexities of forensic practice during this period through the rather unexceptional exchange over a case of suspected drowning that occurred between local officials in Hebei province and Lin Ji (1897-1951), director of the Beiping University Medical School Institute of Legal Medicine. This case reveals the different regimes of forensic knowledge and practice that were used in China during this period as well as the sites at which they interacted.

Introduction

The Case of Wang Tiesheng

On March 21st, 1936, the Institute of Legal Medicine of Beiping University Medical School received a letter from officials in Funing, a county in Hebei province located about 250 km to the east of Beiping (the city of Beijing was called “Beiping” during this period). The officials were seeking assistance in a case involving the death of a local person, 25-year-old Wang Tiesheng (1). Upon receipt by the Institute, the letter was reviewed by Lin Ji (1897-1951), a prominent Chinese expert in legal medicine during this period. Lin had received his MD at Würzburg University in Germany after graduating from National Medical College in Beijing, forerunner of Beiping University Medical School. It was not unusual for Lin Ji’s department to receive letters from judicial officials who had questions about the forensic evidence in cases that they were handling. Nor was it uncommon for officials throughout northern China to ask Lin Ji’s department to examine or test suspected poisons, blood samples, and other physical evidence, which could be mailed to the Institute through the postal system (2) ( Figure 1 ).

Figure 1:

Autopsy room, Institute of Legal Medicine, Beiping University Medical School. Source: Xin yiyao zazhi. 1936;4(6). Chinese.

In this case, the officials were trying to confirm whether Wang Tiesheng had drowned in a pond. While the details of the case are not clear from the information preserved in the Institute’s archive, it seems as though members of Wang’s family had found fault with the county officials’ investigation of his death and that both the cause and manner of death were in dispute or, at least, were not clear (3). The main question seems to have been whether Wang had drowned accidentally or had been killed by another local person named Sun Jinyi.

The condition of Wang Tiesheng’s body was one of the factors that created uncertainty in this case. Wang’s body was buried before the official inquiry began. When the investigating officials first opened the coffin, they found the body to be “rotted” all over (4). After examining the body, these officials concluded that Wang “died by drowning”—that is, accidentally—a verdict that Wang’s family was now contesting. In order to achieve some degree of clarity about what had happened, the officials sent the case to the Institute of Legal Medicine for expert review.

Forensic Practice in Early 20th-Century China

There were relatively few physicians of Western scientific medicine in China during the 1930s and even fewer who had specialized in legal medicine, the particular version of forensic medicine that had been introduced into China from continental Europe and Japan. It was most common, in fact, for the local officials who had responsibility for judicial matters–prosecutors or county magistrates—to oversee forensic body examinations (5). These officials had on their staffs a certain number of assistants called “forensic inspection clerks” (jianyan li). Generally, these were not medical professionals but rather simply low-level judicial personnel who were responsible for examining bodies. In carrying out their forensic work, these officials and their staff body examiners were expected to determine cause of death and solve other forensic problems by using a handbook of forensic practice called the Records on the Washing Away of Wrongs. Originally written in the 13th century, this work had gone through multiple editions and expansions by the start of the modern period. The Washing Away of Wrongs has been translated into multiple languages, including English (6) ( Figure 2 ).

Figure 2:

Herbert A. Giles’ (1845-1935) translation of the Records on the Washing Away of Wrongs (1874). Source: Giles HA. The Hsi Yuan Lu, or Instructions to Coroners. China Rev. 1874 Jul-Aug;3(1):30-38.

The Washing Away of Wrongs was not simply a source of information about how to examine bodies. It also represented a bureaucratic standard that officials were expected to follow when examining bodies and determining cause of death. Under the Qing dynasty’s (1644-1911) judicial system, local (county) officials were only permitted to recommend a sentence in homicide cases. The sentence was only validated and then carried out following review and deliberation by higher officials at the levels of prefecture, province, and, ultimately, the capital in Beijing (7). The case file would be passed up the bureaucratic hierarchy and scrutinized multiple times. During this mandatory review process, higher-level officials could—and did—check to see if local officials had performed the initial body examination according to procedure, as defined in the Washing Away of Wrongs, and thus could evaluate the quality of the forensic evidence.

The members of China’s first generation of modern medicolegal experts—people like Lin Ji—had an ambivalent view of the Washing Away of Wrongs and the premodern tradition of forensic science that it represented. Lin Ji and his colleagues were committed to building a new death investigation system in China, one in which trained physicians would play a central role. This was part of a global trend that went beyond China: similar calls for forensic reform were being made in the United Kingdom, United States, and elsewhere during this period (8,9,10). Likewise, institutes of legal medicine such as that of the Beiping University Medical School were being established in many countries during this period (11). Lin Ji played an important role in pushing forward these efforts in China. For this reason, and also for the role that he played in training China’s initial post-1949 generation of medicolegal experts, Lin Ji is commonly recognized today as the “founder” of legal medicine in China (12).

Forensic Pluralism

The case of Wang Tiesheng highlights a basic feature of Chinese forensic practice during this period: China’s older tradition of forensic science continued to be used alongside the new practices associated with modern legal medicine. Death investigation in early 20th-century China was defined by “forensic pluralism,” a situation in which the different body examination methods and standards of forensic proof associated with the Washing Away of Wrongs and modern legal medicine were both accepted by officialdom and society. My use of “pluralism” here draws on the work of scholars who study medical pluralism, especially in modern China. In his ethnography of Chinese medicine, for example, Volker Scheid has discussed this aspect of contemporary medical practice:

Western, Chinese, shamanist, and religious forms of healing not only exist side-by-side, they are also integrated in many different ways. Patients move easily from one doctor, clinic, or hospital to the next if the present one does not deliver the expected results. In time-honored tradition (especially if they can afford the expense), they may consult several doctors and compare their prescriptions before deciding which one’s treatment to follow (13).

Forensic practice in early 20th-century China was pluralistic in a similar way. Judicial officials—as the main “consumers” of forensic evidence—might utilize different examination techniques and seek the assistance of different kinds of experts in their cases. These different forms of forensic practice were also “integrated,” to use Scheid’s term, in various ways. For example, it was not unusual for judicial officials to use their own forensic inspection clerks to examine the body (using techniques associated with the Washing Away of Wrongs) at the early stage of an investigation and then to seek the assistance of an expert in legal medicine like Lin Ji later on. This pattern was especially common when a dispute arose over the initial examination, as in this case.

This article uses the exchange that unfolded between the local officials in Funing and Lin Ji surrounding the case of Wang Tiesheng to examine the different regimes of forensic knowledge that were used in China during this period as well as the sites at which they interacted. In short, it examines what Chinese forensic pluralism looked like in theory and practice.

Discussion

Documenting the Body

The materials that the officials from Funing sent to the Institute of Legal Medicine included a letter introducing the case and a standardized form that they had filled out at the time of their examination of Wang Tiesheng’s corpse. Chinese judicial officials of this period routinely used this same form to document the body examinations that were carried out in their cases. This form included fields for basic information about the person who had died as well as spaces in which officials were supposed to describe the condition of 91 distinct points on the surface of the body (with some, such as ears, hands, and so on, divided into left and right), including whether there were wounds or other forensically significant findings.

The use of body examination forms such as these had a long history in China. The one that was used during the 1930s was based on an earlier version called shige (checklist of the corpse), which had developed during the Qing dynasty (14). It had been an official requirement of the Qing legal system that officials fill out such a form in any case involving the forensic examination of a body. To guide officials when they were overseeing these examinations, diagrams of the front and back of the body were provided as well ( Figure 3 ). These diagrams indicated every one of the anatomical points that had to be examined during the examination and commented upon in the form.

Figure 3:

Diagram of examination points on the front surface of the body. Source: Xu Lian, Xiyuan lu xiangyi [Detailed Explanations of the Meaning of the Washing Away of Wrongs] (1854). MS Wellcome Chinese Collection No. 55, Vol. 1. Credit: Wellcome Library, London: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/wyc279tr. Image used in accordance with CC-BY 4.0 license.

There were certain features of these forms that were meant to facilitate the examination and analysis of wounds specifically. The forms identified various points on the surface of the body as being “vital spots”—that is, “spots of special sensitivity and danger in case of violent assault, where trauma, contusion or shock will be exceptionally perilous, leading to internal injury or death, sometimes with no external sign of wounding at all,” in the words of Lu Gwei-djen and Joseph Needham (15). The diagrams of the body that accompanied these forms indicated the vital spots with solid black circles in contrast to other parts of the body, which were marked with open circles.

The Qing dynasty’s law code, in fact, required that officials who were judging fatal assault cases involving more than one assailant consider the location of the wound when determining which assailant should be held responsible for the death:

When you evaluate homicide cases, if one person alone beats another to death, regardless of whether the wound is on a vital spot or not, in all cases the killer must atone with his life. If two people beat a person to death in an affray, decide requital [which assailant will be held responsible for the death and given a sentence of capital punishment] according to [injuries on the following] vital spots: crown of the head, fontanel, temples, ear aperture, throat, chest, breasts, bosom, abdomen, navel, ribs, scrotum, back of the head, base of earlobe, the back, spinal column, rear flanks, small of the back, the right and left of the crown of the head, forehead, and frontal eminence (quoted in [14]).

To be sure, officials were encouraged to consider factors other than the location of a wound as well. Forensic handbooks such as the Washing Away of Wrongs discussed the importance of considering the severity of a wound or the time that elapsed between wounding and death. Nonetheless, clearly identifying the location of every wound recorded on the form as well as the status of every injured part as a vital spot or nonvital spot had been a basic element of Qing bureaucratic procedure and it was one that continued to influence Chinese forensic practice into the early 20th century.

Returning to the case of Wang Tiesheng, the Funing officials had made various observations about the condition of Wang’s corpse on the body examination form that they filled in. These observations included, for example, that the facial complexion of Wang’s corpse was “rotted,” the mouth “slightly open” with tongue “swollen and protruding past the teeth,” the belly “sunken,” testicles and anus “rotted,” and that there were patches of red-colored skin on the legs and arms and areas of rotted skin on the underside of Wang’s body (16). Each of these observations was filled in under the relevant anatomical point on the form, each of which was identified as being a vital spot or a nonvital spot following the older classification scheme that had been used since the Qing. Of course, given that no wounds were recorded on the form, the use of this classification was simply a bureaucratic formality that did not influence the officials’ analysis of cause of death at all. While the officials did not explain how they determined that Wang had drowned, it is likely that the lack of observed wounds anywhere on Wang’s body influenced this conclusion.

A Flawed Examination

The examination of Wang Tiesheng’s body, as documented on this form, clearly did not give Lin Ji confidence in the forensic abilities of these officials. They concluded that Wang had drowned on the basis of a body examination that was cursory by any standard, even moreso with respect to contemporary medicolegal standards of proof for making a determination of fatal drowning. In the lengthy response that Lin Ji composed for the officials, he described various external signs that could be used to analyze whether Wang had actually drowned or had been thrown into the water after dying in some other way (e.g., frothy liquid discharged from the nose and mouth or mud, sand, plant matter, or other particles under the nails). Autopsying the body could reveal sand or other drowning fluid particles in the lungs (or elsewhere in the respiratory tract), bloating of the lungs, diluted blood in the left side of the heart, and various other anatomical signs that the medicolegal literature of the early 20th-century viewed as supporting evidence of drowning (17).

Lin Ji also found the officials’ description of the body to be imprecise and lacking in the kind of detail that would be most useful for the case at hand. For example, the officials had failed to record whether or not mud and sand or other matter had been found in Wang’s clenched hands or under his fingernails (18). Characterizing the officials’ finding that Wang had drowned as “greatly mistaken,” Lin Ji suggested that there was little evidence, at least as described in their report that could sustain this conclusion. One gets the impression that this was simply a flawed examination.

Yet, beyond imploring the officials to send Wang Tiesheng’s remains (especially internal organs) to the Institute of Legal Medicine for additional examination, there was little else that Lin Ji could do. Another manifestation of the forensic pluralism that existed in China at this time was the fact that forensic examinations carried out in localities such as Funing fell under the jurisdiction of judicial officials, not medicolegal experts like Lin Ji. While such experts might be called upon for their assistance, their involvement in the death investigation process was not required by law. Nor could experts like Lin Ji compel judicial officials to carry out particular tests or take specific actions in any given case.

The Changing Corpse

At the center of this exchange between Funing officials and Lin Ji was Wang Tiesheng’s corpse. The officials had noted in their report that by the time they carried out their examination, Wang’s body already showed signs of putrefaction. Understanding the ways in which the body changes after death was an important focus of both the Washing Away of Wrongs and legal medicine, albeit in ways that could be quite different. Briefly examining how postmortem change was understood and managed within these different regimes of forensic knowledge can provide another perspective on what forensic pluralism looked like in China during this period.

The Dead Body and Early 20th-Century Legal Medicine

By the 19th century, the authors of English-language works of forensic medicine were showing a definite interest in systematically documenting the signs of death, including putrefaction (19). As Ian Burney and Neil Pemberton have described in their study of “celebrity pathologist” Bernard Spilsbury’s (1877-1947) involvement in the trial of Norman Thorne for the murder of his fiancée Elsie Cameron (a case in which questions arose about how to extract usable forensic evidence from a decomposing body), postmortem change had become an important focus of modern forensic medicine by the early 20th century. In the words of Burney and Pemberton, by this point “[putrefaction] was a process that could be reliably mapped according to a set of interrelated physiological and environmental factors whose actions could be ascertained and predicted by reference to laboratory-derived norms” (20). As a result, “[putrefaction] was thus itself reconstituted as a new investigatory artefact, one that no longer impeded forensic knowledge but rather became a means to its production.” The late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw growing interest in the question of how insect activity on and around the dead body might be used to estimate the time that had elapsed since death (21,22).

Such knowledge was also introduced into China. The most influential early 20th-century Chinese-language translations of modern legal medicine were completed on the basis of Japanese textbooks. This reflected the significant influence that Japanese legal institutions and scientific knowledge had on China during this period. Chinese translations of Japanese textbooks of legal medicine written by Ishikawa Kiyotada and Tanaka Yūkichi, for example, included descriptions of various physical and chemical changes occurring in the body following death, including putrefaction, lividity, rigor mortis, and the formation of adipocere (23,24).

China’s earliest trained experts in legal medicine, including Lin Ji, demonstrated their own interest in these issues. While studying for his MD in Germany in the mid-1920s, Lin Ji investigated the lifecycles of flies on cadavers that had been made available for experimentation and, in another study, attempted to create laboratory conditions that would produce adipocere (25). Another area of Lin Ji’s research involved the development of histological, chemical, and other techniques for detecting sand and other drowning fluid particles in the decomposed respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts of corpses discovered in varying stages of putrefaction (26). Given their relevance for this case, Lin Ji described these tests in detail in the written response that he returned to the Funing officials (27).

The Dead Body and the Washing Away of Wrongs

Forensic interest in putrefaction and other postmortem changes was hardly new in early 20th-century China. Roughly parallel concerns could be found in the substantial forensic literature that developed during the Qing dynasty and earlier. For centuries prior to the modern period, officials in China had relied on various measures to combat the forensic challenges of postmortem bodily change. Some of these measures were administrative in nature. For example, officials of the Qing bureaucracy could be punished for delaying forensic examinations, which might lead to additional changes in the corpse and the further degradation of evidence. This regulation was specified in the Qing dynasty’s law code:

Whenever (an official having jurisdiction, when he first) investigates the wounds on a corpse, (when he receives a commission to do this) and the written [commission] has arrived, invents a pretext (and delays) and does not immediately investigate, thus causing the corpse to decompose…then the principal official receives 60 strokes of the heavy bamboo. The chief officer (who participated in the examination) receives 70 strokes of the heavy bamboo. The chief clerk receives 80 strokes of the heavy bamboo (28).

Aside from being regulated by bureaucratic measures such as these, Chinese officials were also expected to draw upon the technical knowledge contained in forensic handbooks. Within the Washing Away of Wrongs and its various commentaries and case collections one finds detailed descriptions of various kinds of natural postmortem changes that might confuse officials or prevent them from properly identifying bruises or other wounds. These passages described the discolored flesh, swelling, fluid leakage, and insect activity associated with putrefaction, and the pace at which bodies might be expected to change in different seasonal conditions. For example, one chapter in the text, “Decay of corpses in the four seasons,” contains passages such as the following:

During the three months of spring, when a body is two or three days old, the flesh of the mouth, nose, belly, ribs, and chest becomes slightly livid. After ten days, a foul liquid issues from the nose and ears. In fat and swollen people it is like this. Those long ill and emaciated will display these symptoms only after half a month.

During the three months of summer, when the body is one or two days old, the flesh will change color, beginning with the face, belly, ribs, and chest. When three days have passed, a foul liquid will issue from the mouth and nose, and maggots will appear. The whole body will swell, the lips will pull back, the skin will rot and separate from the flesh, and blisters will appear. After four or five days, the hair falls out (29).

The Washing Away of Wrongs described other ways in which the body could be expected to change after death. For example, the text described another phenomenon in which the blood was believed to disperse around the body after death. This could cause discolored surfaces resembling bruises. As explained in the text, this condition was caused “when the blood inside of the belly disperses on the outside. It cannot amass, so floats about [around the rest of the body].” Officials were instructed to distinguish this phenomenon from bruising by pressing or pinching discolored areas in order to test for a hard texture, a sign that the discoloration was caused by a bruise and not simply the expected postmortem dispersal of blood around the body:

When examining wounds [i.e. bruises or other injuries] one must press blue and red spots with one’s fingers. If it is a wound it will be hard. When the finger is taken away it will still be blue or red. Drip water on it. If the drops do not scatter off then it is a real wound. If it is simply a spot that has changed from the dispersal of blood, it will be white when releasing one’s finger. If one drips water on it, the drops will not stay in place (30).

This was because, as the same passage explained, “if the wound was inflicted while the victim was alive, [the vital force] qi ceases and the blood congeals to become a wound [i.e. bruise]. Blood follows qi in its circulation. If qi arrests, so does blood. Thus it is hard.” These passages, and the examination techniques that they described, were based on a conception of the body different from that of modern anatomy or physiology.

Officials also responded to the challenges posed by the changing corpse by developing knowledge and techniques for examining skeletal remains (31) ( Figure 4 ). Given the bureaucratic requirements surrounding judicial review and appeals under the legal system of the Qing dynasty, it was not uncommon for there to be a need to exhume and reexamine bodies months or even years after an investigation had concluded. The Washing Away of Wrongs described various techniques that could be used to make the traces of wounds or other forensically significant signs visible on the bones. The original 13th-century Washing Away of Wrongs, for example, contained the following passage:

Figure 4:

Diagram of examination points on the front surface of the skull. Source: Xu Lian, Xiyuan lu xiangyi [Detailed Explanations of the Meaning of the Washing Away of Wrongs] (1854). MS Wellcome Chinese Collection No. 55, Vol. 2. Credit: Wellcome Library, London: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/rdkhqjrw. Image used in accordance with CC-BY 4.0 license.

When examining bones, it is necessary that the day be clear and bright. First, use water to wash the bones. Using hemp twine, string them together to form a skeleton. Next, lay them out on a mat. Then, dig a pit in the ground measuring five feet long, three feet wide, and two feet deep. Burn wood and charcoal in it until the ground is red hot. Clear out the coals, and pour in two pints of good wine and five pints of strong vinegar. While it is steaming, lay the bones in the pit and cover them with straw mats. Let them remain there for two to four hours. When the ground has cooled, remove the mats and take the skeleton to a level, well-lighted place where it can be examined under a red oiled umbrella. If there are places on the bones that have been struck, then there will be traces of a red color. The two ends of the place where the bones were broken will have a blood red halo. Moreover, if on holding the injured bone up to the light it shows a vivid red color, then the injuries were clearly inflicted before death. If the bones show no traces of blood, but there are breaks, then these were inflicted after death (32).

Similar practices for examining bones were still being used by Chinese judicial officials during the 1920s and 1930s at the moment when medicolegal experts like Lin Ji were starting to handle cases (33).

Evaluating the Washing Away of Wrongs: The View From the Laboratory

Medicolegal experts such as Lin Ji were aware of this older tradition of forensic knowledge and often discussed it in their writings. We find one such discussion in an article from 1935, titled “On cadaveric phenomena and the distinctions between postmortem lividity and subcutaneous hemorrhaging.” Written by Zhang Jizhong, this piece appeared in Monthly Bulletin of Legal Medicine, a journal published by another institution with which Lin Ji was involved, the Ministry of Judicial Administration’s Research Institute of Legal Medicine in Shanghai (34). In this article, Zhang described the predictable characteristics and stages of postmortem bodily change on the basis of German, Japanese, and Chinese sources (including Lin Ji’s work on forensic applications of entomology). Zhang was a member of the first class of specialists trained at this institution and subsequently took a position as a medicolegal expert at the Shandong provincial court (35).

Zhang criticized the fact that forensic examinations were routinely carried out in China by people who lacked even basic medical knowledge, a situation that “not only trifles with human life, but also obstructs the spirit of rule of law!” Yet, Zhang also acknowledged that the Washing Away of Wrongs discussed familiar postmortem bodily changes of the kind that now fell under the rubric of “cadaveric phenomena,” an established area of modern medicolegal knowledge. Such texts, for example, included passages clearly describing the phenomena of lividity and rigor mortis. Zhang’s final judgment was that while these texts’ descriptions of the changing corpse were “extremely detailed,” nonetheless they were also “unsystematic and particularly unscientific.” This matched other contemporary evaluations of the Washing Away of Wrongs that posited that the text was rich in officials’ empirical observations but lacked any grounding in the modern sciences, including anatomy, pathology, physics, and chemistry (for a recent nuanced discussion of the strengths, weaknesses, and effectiveness of Qing forensic practices, see (31)).

Zhang Jizhong was not the only medicolegal expert who spent time discussing China’s older tradition of forensic science. This period saw the first systematic attempts to write the history of forensic science in China, and these works were largely written by medicolegal experts who were involved in forensic examination work. Lin Ji himself wrote an article narrating the history of forensic science in China, titled “A brief history of legal medicine” (1936), and others did as well (36). Sun Kuifang (b. 1898), one of Lin Ji’s contemporaries and a medicolegal expert who had received training in France, coauthored another historical survey titled “A history of legal medicine in China” (1936). Not surprisingly, the Washing Away of Wrongs was mentioned in the first lines of the piece:

The Washing Away of Wrongs is a kind of forensic examination method used by the government offices that handle criminal cases in our country. Its examination practices do not use scientific methods, nor does it take medicine as its basis. Therefore it cannot be viewed as [equivalent to] legal medicine. Yet, because there is no other material that can be used beyond the Washing Away of Wrongs, in compiling this history we have had to divide the history of legal medicine in China into the following three periods: The first period is that prior to the emergence of the Washing Away of Wrongs. The second is that in which it emerged. The third is that of the importation of [modern] legal medicine (quoted in [36]).

Much like Zhang Jizhong, Sun Kuifang believed that while the Washing Away of Wrongs could not be viewed as “scientific” per se, it was, nonetheless, a source of forensic knowledge that was impossible to avoid. One could hardly narrate the history of forensic science in China without discussing it.

Conclusion

When Lin Ji, Sun Kuifang, Zhang Jizhong, and other medicolegal experts discussed the Washing Away of Wrongs in their writings it was not because they had a purely intellectual interest in the text. Rather, this text and the knowledge that it contained were routinely put into practice by officials in the Chinese judiciary. In 1930s Beiping and elsewhere, in fact, most forensic body examinations were still carried out by judicial officials and their forensic inspection clerks, not physicians or medicolegal experts. As Lin Ji and others were well aware, these old texts constituted a basic source of working knowledge on which officials of the Chinese judiciary relied every single day. This older tradition of knowledge was something that experts like Lin Ji might encounter in the course of their own routine forensic work, and in the very evidence that they received from local officials who were seeking their assistance in particular cases.

The case of Wang Tiesheng suggests both the possibilities and limits that pertained to the practice of modern forensic medicine in 1930s China. It was a case that demonstrated the new possibilities for medicolegal laboratories such as the Beiping University Medical School Institute of Legal Medicine to become involved in cases that had occurred in distant localities, an arrangement that relied on the postal system to facilitate the transfer of documents and, in some cases, physical evidence. At the same time, this case demonstrates the very real limits that were placed on the practice of forensic medicine in early 20th-century China as well as the challenges that experts like Lin Ji faced as they attempted to bolster their own professional authority.

Ultimately, it was not until much later—after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949—that China developed a death investigation system that could successfully bring the norms and practices of modern forensic medicine into localities such as Funing. At that point, the forensic pluralism of the early 20th century yielded to a system in which scientific knowledge and medical expertise held a dominant and unquestioned position.

AUTHORS

Daniel Asen, Rutgers University Newark, Newark

Roles: Project conception and/or design, data acquisition, analysis and/or interpretation, manuscript creation and/or revision, approved final version for publication, accountable for all aspects of the work.