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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Archive through January 15, 2000
Casebook Message Boards: General Discussion: Medical / Forensic Discussions:
JTR's Hysterectomies:
Archive through January 15, 2000
Author: Jon
Wednesday, 12 January 2000 - 07:32 pm |        | Thanks for the extract 'anon'.
I have a much better copy of that photo and I can see lots of shadow, bloody tissue, sinue and what appear to be tendons.
How can I question a Fellow of the Royal College of surgeons. If Nick has enough faith in the quality of an old photo, to be so sure about it then maybe we should wonder why there is no other mention in the autopsy nor any other evidence on the body.
When an attacker uses a hatchet in a modern murder....its more often than not very evident.
They use a hatchet to 'hack', not to slice, you dont use a hatchet to slice tissues off the face.
Seeing as how this killer had time on his side I would expect to see severed limbs or a decapitation,.....not a questionable crack in thightbone on a 100 yr old black and white photo.
Precious little is unequivocal in this case.
Regards, Jon |
Author: Bob Hinton
Thursday, 13 January 2000 - 04:18 am | | Dear Everyone,
I'm not sure if this the correct place for discussion about the hatchet but since its here...
I personally don't believe the thigh bone was split for two reasons, one such an obvious injury would be surely commented on by a man who even lists a one inch cut on MJK's hand (or thumb. Secondly surely the sliver of bone would have been noted, just about everything else was.
Nick Warren is not correct in saying a knife could not possibly inflict such injury. The Gurkha Kukri (have I spelt that right) and a heavy bladed knife like a Bowie will do the job quite adequately.
I would however question the possibility of splitting a thighbone with anything with the body on a bed. As you struck down the force of the blow would tend to push the body into the soft mattress, I would have thought a hard surface like a floor or a table would have been required.
The quote from the Globe containing so many inaccuracies can be safely ignored, after all wasn't it the same Black Museum that had Jack the Rippers death mask exhibited for so long?
all the best
Bob Hinton |
Author: Wolf
Thursday, 13 January 2000 - 04:30 pm | | I would tend to agree with Bob on this point and the photographic evidence does seem to show the bone to be split but if so, there doesn't appear to be any other damage inflicted on the body by a hatchet if indeed a hatchet was used. Why wouldn't Bond describe this in his notes considering that they were for official purposes only? and why wasn't the fact mentioned in his report to Anderson? Even if a knife was used on the femur, the damage was not mentioned.
If, however, a hatchet was used, the likelyhood was that it belonged to Kelly and not some clue left by the Ripper. The instances of axe and hatchet murders have drastically declined over the years for the simple reason that we are less likely to have one of these close at hand in our homes. For example, the axeman of New Orleans only used axes that he found in his victims homes, easier to walk around undetected that way.
Wolf. |
Author: D. Radka
Thursday, 13 January 2000 - 07:49 pm | | Another excellent post by Mr. H--glad to have him here.
David |
Author: Ashling
Thursday, 13 January 2000 - 08:13 pm | | Welcome aboard & welcome back to our two docs - Ind & Villon! Will have a few comments/questions for y'all next week.
ANON: Many thanks for posting Nick's article, which I never had access to before. Do you (or anyone else) know the details of the "restoration" done to the photo when it was turned over to PRO? I'm trolling my acquaintances for a historically knowledgeable photographer to help me understand several issues on this case ... stay tuned to this station.
JON: I've not reached a conclusion yet on the thigh bone issue. My copy of this pic is sepia toned & so awash with sunlight that evaluating any details is difficult. Hope to draw on your expertise ...
Assuming for a moment the bone is split, do you agree with Nick's assessment that "only a weapon such as a hatchet" would be capable of doing the job? What kind of damage do you think a butcher's meat cleaver would inflict on a human leg bone? Did you use a cleaver or a saw when cutting up a bone-in roast and similar items from a cow or pig?
Also, I think Bob H. makes a valid point regarding the softness of the mattress. Jon, do you feel it would make "chopping" impossible, or merely difficult? The heavy blood saturation on the upper right corner of the bed seems to indicate Mary's body was moved to its final resting place on the mattress' left side. Perhaps extending her left leg across the (wooden? metal?) bed frame railing would give some support for the killer to chop against.
BOB H: Knowing you usually put your theories through practical tests - I'm curious as to what experiments you've been up to with a Bowie Knife and such. I do hope there's never a violent murder committed near your home ... despite your good standing in your former profession, your neighbors would turn you over to the police immediately! ;-)
Best regards,
Janice |
Author: Jon
Thursday, 13 January 2000 - 10:15 pm | | Ashling
My version of this photo is quite clear. its the one published in the JtR, A-Z.
I have not seen one clearer, but would like to. However, from what I can determine, looking at the left inner thighbone & knee only, we are looking at flesh, sinue and laserated muscle.
I cannot say if their is any damage to the bone itself, if someone can delineate it for me I would appreciate it, I see no fractured femur nor exposed marrow cavity. There is a shadow of a shape that almost looks like a pair of calipers laid along the femur, but this is surly a trick on the eye.
Yes Ash, I used a cleaver every day for several years, I'm very familiar with what a fracture wound or shattered bone would look like, I caused plenty of them :-)
That bone is very brittle, it splinters like slate or flint. It will be a straight edge, as opposed to rough, slightly diagonal when viewed lengthwise. This is hard to visualize but we are looking for a very straight edge if it runs the entire length of the femure. And as the angle is so poor we cannot see the entire length of the femur from here.
If you look at the other photo (body on the bed) you see flesh up to and over her left knee. Then look back at the small photo, there is no appreciable reduction in size from the knee to the bone, compare with the view of her right femur, the obvious bone is well below the flesh level of the right knee, and very white. This is a good indication that we are still looking at muscle around the left femur, it was not reduced to the bone level.
I would not like to hazzard a guess as to what weapons could fracture a femur, obviously heavy and stout backed, for sure. I would feel better about what we are talking about if I could see the 'supposed' fracture, but I cannot. And based on that, I dont think its there.
Incidently, a butcher will always cut the femur (of a cow) with a saw, only when he needs to retrieve the marrow would he shatter it with a blow from a cleaver, its very messy, bits fly all over, and it splinters into sharp pieces, easier to pick out the marrow though.
Bob's point about the bone not shattering is valid, but if the bed is not too soft, and the cleaver is sharp and you catch it with a good blow at just the right angle, you could still do it.
Regards, Jon |
Author: ChrisGeorge
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 01:14 am | | Hi, Jon:
It looks to me as if the fractured left femur is in the large picture of Mary Jane Kelly not in the small one. I can't see any bone at all in the small photograph, so I agree with you there. But the bone certainly is very evident in the famous and larger photograph.
Chris George |
Author: Jeff D
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 12:45 pm | | Hello All !
I'm a little bit lost on the matter of the hatchet, but I just thought I'd butt in again regarding medical or anatomical competence. Considering the victim was dead or near to death when they were lowered to the ground, why didn't the killer just go straight ahead and mutilate the abdomen, especially if time were of the essence ? I believe that even the throat mutilation itself indicates someone who has some experience in anatomy, surgery, or at the very least butchery.
Lack of bruising on the back of the head indicates the victim was gently lowered to the ground. The victims would not have done this willingly while he got his knife out. The total silence indicates no or very little struggle took place. The ripper appears to have taken precautions not to get himself splattered with blood. An attack from behind, especially if the killer went to slash the throat immediately from behind for example, would mean a significant blood splatter on the nearest wall, fence or pavement, let alone the possibility of splattering the killer himself. As mentioned, I think the throat severence is indicative of some kind of experience. The throat wasn't just slit, it was violently ripped, to the point of near decapitation. I believe that this in itself was intentional, and resulted in an immediate release of blood and drop in pressure to allow the abdominal mutilations to be carried out quickly without too much blood getting in the way, or being spattered all over and allowing the best possible insight to the abdominal cavity and internal organs.
I wonder if a professional could answer whether this would make any sense? Would it make a difference when performing the abdominal mutilations that a significant amount of the victims blood would have already been let through the throat wound? Would a quick drop in blood pressure make it easier to find what you were looking for in the abdomen? Or do you believe that the throat wounds were just another part of the mutilations? When performing open surgery properly on a living patient does even minimal bleeding cause any problem when you are trying to locate any specific organ?
Jeff D |
Author: Thomas Ind
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 01:21 pm | | Right, back to the message boards.
As I have conciously not contributed for the last 4 days I have quite a lot to say so I will split it up.
Firstly, I have received a lot of personal e-mails from people on the site. Thank you and in particular thank you to the one person who has been sending me things daily. Unfortunately I am having problems with my server. I am having problems sending e-mails through Outlook and as this is a new problem I am just waiting to see if it gets better. So one big general thank you - I am getting them and have written replies but am just waiting for them to go out without error messages being returned.
I will start on the hatchet issue. It looks like a split bone to me but the photo isn't good. I understand that technology is such nowadays that B&W photos can be converted to colour. Is it not about time that this was done for the JTR photos. I'm sure enough of us would want a copy to pool in for one. Does anyone know how where it can be done? One comment was about bone splitting. Now I am no orthopaedic surgeon but I thought that different bones have different consistency. I need to ask an orthopaedic colleague and if somone sends me a really good quality JPEG of the picture I will show it to one next time I see one (there are no orthopaedic surgeons at Barts but are at the RLH. It will have to be next time I am on-call there). Furthermore, I have a skeleton. It is from when I was a medical student but now they use plastic ones and real ones no one wants. I thought about throwing it away but then realised that that might be a bit tricky if someone found it. I am therefore stuck with what to do with it. So Dr Villon a question of ethics for you. Would it be unethical to attack it to see if it splinters? I think that would probably not be in keeping with good professional conduct? I understand skeletons that used to be handed down medical students did not come from people who donated their bodies but were marketed from people making a profit from war. What did you do with your skeleton?
Finally. JTRology is a hobby. Can you all call be Tom not Dr Ind. |
Author: Thomas Ind
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 01:33 pm | | As sending messages through the site seems to work better than my Outlook I will continue.
It has been suggested that we have a different section for medical issues. Christopher suggested that I take the lead. I have no idea how I would go about this so could someone else take the lead? I think the section should be titled "Forensic and medical issues" or something like that so it does not give the appearance of a medical site for doctors only. Dr Villon and I can always e-mail each other if we wish without having a whole section to ourselves!!! I think the section could discuss all forensic issues not just those of the body as well as discussion on postmortems, medical reports and the medical histories of the characters involved in the mystery.
When I initially posted my question last week I thought that I would get an answer. I did. The problem is that it resulted in many more questions that those originally put forward. I will address all these issue in seperate posts.
I have one final comment before going through all the issues raised in the last week. I am amazed at how trusting everyone seems to be of contemporary expert opinion. A few of those on the site have blinded accepted a lot of what I have had to say (Villon & Jon excluded) even though I have been forming theory during the posting. The same has to be said about expert reports from the time. Just because someone is a professional does not mean they are correct. Everything must be challenged even if it may be daunting trying to argue with someone who may be more knowledgable about specific issues.
Tom |
Author: Thomas Ind
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 02:40 pm | | THE HYSTERECTOMY, HANDEDNESS AND ATTACK FROM BEHIND OR FROM INFRONT
This was the initial reason for my post. I read during my previous period of enthusiasm 5 years ago that JTR was supposed to be left handed. The author of that book (I can't remember which) used an argument to support his suspect who was right handed by saying that he would have produced the same injuries by attacking from behind.
Jon has now made it clear that this is rubbish and I agree with him having studied the photos of Eddowes. With my knowledge of pelvic anatomy and Jon's knowledge of the crime scenes we have concluded that the best evidence available from the pelvic anatomy side is that JTR was right handed. I now realise that this is irrelevant to whether or not JTR attacked from behind or from infront.
One other final point on this topic. If you have the A-Z and are right handed look at the diagram of Eddomes neck. Now get a pillow and place in on the floor. get on the floor; put your left hand on the pillow as if over a victims mouth; and pretend to cut the pillow (victims neck) with your right hand. This will produce a cut going from the victims right to left and upwards. Now imagine the same thing standing and facing the victim. If you are of a similar height the cut would still be in that direction. Now pretend you are attacking the pillow from behind and place your left hand around the pillow bringing it towards you and cutting from behind. Still the cut is in the same direction. Therefore these injuries could have been made either way.
I think that forensic pathologists can tell where the start and end of a cut are and therefore can we draw any conclusions from the direction described by Brown in the Eddowes case? |
Author: Thomas Ind
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 03:17 pm | | MEDICAL SKILL
I know I brought this up in my initial post but this was not the reason for it. This has been the most popular topic on the suject and I seem to be out on a limb here. The point I was making was that I thought that anyone could have done it. I am convinced that it was 'smash & grab' as even a skilled surgeon could not see what he was doing even if it was light.
However, the points that seem to be made here are that only someone with anatomical knowledge would know where the organs are. I agree, but I also say that anyone with a hand in the abdomen would feel the organs excised and could therefore remove them. The exception possibly is a kidney but JTR removed his victims bowel and after this the left kidney would be easy to feel and remove. So anyone could have done it. Yes, probably a butcher or a surgeon are more likely to know where the organs are. But when I do a laparotomy for cancer I start by feeling my way around the abdominal looking for organs that might have been affected by the cancer. All the organs can be felt and even medical students who have limited ability can feel them easily. These organs would be felt by anyone with their hand in an abdomen even if they didn't know what they are. To get visual access to excise (rather than slash out) these organs requires excellent light, assistence and considerably more skill than that demonstrated by JTR.
So do I think it was a Lay person? I have no idea.
Do I think it was a doctor? No, I don't think a doctor would have made the approach that JTR did. I think a doctor would have always approached from the right (as all doctors of whatever handedness are trained to do this and often find it difficult to go from another side). I don't think that a doctor would have made the aimless stabs in the liver and I don't believe the psychological profile fits a doctor.
Do I think that it was someone with anatomical skill from another profession? Well the Psychological profile suggested that JTR may have sought employment in a related subject in the samway that a paedophile might become a teacher. However, this could be wrong as it was not the case in other situaations (e.g West & Brady). Furthermore, a large number of professions in that day would fit, even the forces (think of Tabram suspects) would fit this aimless description.
I think the Butcher's opinion was important. However, I do have a number of comments to make about this. Firstly, the Butcher knows what he wants to remove. So it is not surprising that he would feel uneasy about removing a womb which he does not know about. So I have one question which might oneday warrant a trip accross the road to ask the guys at Smithfield meat market. What percentage of animal carcasses are female? Very few I suspect as I understood that farmers kept female animals for milk, fleeces and reproduction and only a few males most of the later being sent for slaughter. Please coorect me if I am wrong but would a butcher see many uteruses?
So in summary;
Yes I think a Medic, butcher soldier etc would be more likely to know where the organs are.
Yes a butcher, doctor, undertaker or mortuary attendent might be marginally more skilled at removing the organs as they know where they are.
No, I don't think a doctor did it but I accept that JTR could have been a doctor or medical person (i.e. possible but not probable).
Yes, a butcher, mortuary attendent etc fits the psychological profile but I don't believe that there is strong evidence to support that JTR came from these professions.
Yes, I think it is just as likely that he was a lay person and inspite of the other comments on the site I believe that skill was NOT necessary even if it may have had a minor advantage. I'm not even sure it would have had any advantage.
Finally I think back to my days at school when we were made to dissect frogs and when at medical school we dissected bodies. Some people didn't mind and got dug in, others felt sick and found it difficult, others refused to do it. I propose that even the week hearted could murder someone in a sudden outburst of temper or under alcohol; however to perform the JTR mutilations you would have in the first of these 3 categories. Who agrees with this last statement and does anyone disagree? |
Author: Thomas Ind
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 03:31 pm | | WAS THE LUSK KIDNEY HUMAN
Before I continue on the subjects already mentions I thought that I would bring up this one. Is this something that we can challenge or has someone performed cytogenetics on the kidney? Does this kidney still exist in the Black Museum?
If an expert says it is human as a result of cytogenetic then we have little to stand on challenging this. But if so can I confirm that it was a female kidney? If it hasn't been confirmed I think that I have the resources available to me to persuade someone to test it (but if it was in formalin we may have to think about this very carefully as most genetic tissue is killed after being in formalin)
If cytogenetic or chromosomal testing has not been performed, then how did the expert come to the conclusion it was human (the former technologies were not available in the 19th century).
Was it on size? Well in our pathology laboratory we have many kidneys all of different sizes due to age, habitus and disease of the patient. Surely the same applies to animals and that there must be some cross over in the distributions of size between humans and some animals.
Was it because of the intrinsic anatomy of the kidney? If so, what is it about the human kidneys intrinsic anatomy which is unique?
I understand that the Kidney had Bright's disease? Is this true? Have the original slides been reviewed by contemporary histopathologists (I could arrange this too)? Can animals have Brights disease or a condition of the kidney that looks histopathologically similar? Do some animal's normal kidneys look like a human Bright's kidney?
If no chromosomal or genetic studies have been made then it is time to challenge this assumption that the kidney was human and if it still exists we can test this theory. |
Author: Thomas Ind
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 03:47 pm | | MY SPELLING AND DISEASE OF THE UTERUS
I am churning out these posts again and am having some amusement with my spelling when I read them posted. I hope you don't mind the sloppy posts?
Dr Villon and I have both stated that it is likely that the victims (prostitutes) might have a condition called PELVIC INFLAMMATORY DISEASE (or PID). It is also possible statistically that the pelvis may be diseased by other common conditions such as fibroids or endometriosis.
I am now not so sure. Syphilis (very rare indeed now) was very common in these times but that does not cause a PID type pelvis. TB can rarely but pelvic TB is as rare as sensible Ripper suspects. Gonnorhoea existed and can rarely cause PID today. Chlamydia is the common cause of PID today and I don't even think it was recognised in 1888. Furthermore it is contemporarily thought that chlamydia infection is a relatively new disease on the scene.
So we are down to gonnorhoea. I have a family planning / women's advice book from 1920. It is incredably naive and really made me wonder if people in these times only had sex when they had children. So even though these women were prostitutes there clients might be less promiscuous. I wonder how common it was in those days.
Amazon delivered the Sugden book last night. I have only read the start and was interest to read the pathology report on Tabram. That suggested that the uterus was normal. I understand that there is no report on Polly and will be reading carefully of other known prostitutes. There are a number of other potential victims that most agree are not JTR victims (Wilson, Smith etc). We know that they were prostitutes and do we have any PM reports on them that might state that they have PID? Although I accept that it might be missed, Dr Villon and I are interested in severe cases that would not be missed. If we found 7 or 8 PM reports from known prostitutes from this era and found none, the likelihood of the others having it is less. Some research for someone with time.
Furthermore, someone might find a medical text book with from the era with the information required |
Author: Christopher-Michael
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 04:14 pm | | Dear Dr Ind (or Tom, as you prefer) -
Finally, a point I have some knowledge on!
To the best of our knowledge, the Lusk Kidney (LK - you have no idea how tiring it is to type those words over and over again) no longer exists. It was last in the posession of Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown, who was reported as being in the midst of examining it when he was interviewed on Ocotber 22 by "The Star of the East." Dr Brown may have kept the LK as a medical curiosity, or he may have returned it to the Met or City forces; there is no evidence as to its final disposal.
The LK was regarded as human by each medical man who saw it: Dr Thomas Openshaw, Dr Brown and a Mr F.S. Reed, assistant to Dr Wiles of Mile-end Road, who was the first medical man to see the LK on October 18. The only dissenting opinion was from Dr William Sedgewick Saunders, who was quoted thus in the "Liverpool Daily Post" of Ocotber 20:
"It is a pity some people have not got the courage to say they don't know. You may take it that there is no difference whatever between the male and the female kidney. As for those in animals, they are similar, the cortical substance is the same and the structure only differs in shape. I think it would be quite possible to mistake it for a pig's."
However, Dr Saunders himself had not - so far as we know - seen the LK; in this instance, he was responding to a reporter who had asked him to comment on a "medical man's" report that the LK was that of a woman. It appears from surviving sources that the kidney was judged to be human based on histologic grounds, since the precipitin test had not yet been developed (unfortunately, I cannot comment on your use of the word 'cytogenetic,' as the term is not in my Dorland's Medical Dictionary. I think I understand what you mean, though I am quite thick sometimes!).
Both Dr Openshaw and Dr Brown, in reporting to the Met and City forces, stated only that the kidney was human. The assertion that it was a female kidney came from unsubstantiated press reports and the "From Hell" letter itself.
With regards to Bright's Disease:
Eddowes' post-mortem report noted that her right kidney was "pale, bloodless with slight congestion of the base of the pyramids." Nick Warren has gone on record as stating that this indicates Bright's Disease. We cannot, however, also presume that the LK had the same disease. The only statement to this effect was made by Major Henry Smith in his 1910 memoirs, 'From Constable to Commissioner,' in which he wrote:
"The kidney left in the corpse was in an advanced state of Bright's Disease; the kidney sent me was in an exactly similar state."
However, Smith never indicated who presented him with a report indicating bilateral Bright's Disease, the report that Dr Brown prepared on it has been lost and the surviving descriptions of the LK provide us only with frustratingly vague nomenclature such as "distinct marks of disease," or "ginny kidney." Dr Brown himself noted only that the LK showed "no trace of decomposition." The LK may have shown signs of disease - and, if it came from the body of a recent East End decedent, such a thing is very probable. But there is no surviving comprehensive description of the pathological condition of the LK, and we therefore cannot say what its "signs of disease" may have been; we are not, I think, justified in assuming it to have been Bright's Disease beyond a factor of probability.
As ever,
CMD |
Author: Thomas Ind
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 06:41 pm | | I still have more posts but my server collapsed on me earlier. First I must reply to CMD.
Brilliant.
So if I get it right Oppenshaw and Brown thought it was a human kidney. Is there any indication on why they thought it was a human kidney? Did they justify their reasons? Perhaps it's size, looks and shape were consistent with a human kidney but other than that we cannot say that it is one. The long and short of it is that it appears from the information available that by modern day standards Oppenshaw & Brown would be laughed at with their conclusions.
I think we are at a stage of where we can do an experiment. I need to take some photographs of human kidneys from our pathology museum. Then we need to take some from a pig, sheep and cow from our local butcher. Then we should post them and demonstrate how difficult it is to tell (or not?).
Perhaps some anatomy text book would print the range of sizes of a human kidney, & others of pigs etc. Grays anatomy says this 'Each kidney is about 11 cm in length, 6cm in breadth, and about 3cm in anteroposterior thickness. In the adult male the weight of the kidney averages about 150g., in the adult female 135g.'. This is the full version and regrettably there is no comment on ranges.
My final question now concerning the kidney is this. OK the kidney is lost. Perhaps it is sitting in some formalin jar somewhere although I doubt one with teeth marks would stay long in a medical school without someone commenting. Today when PMs are performed, slices of important organs such as the kidney are made and placed on a slide for microscopic analysis. Do we know if that was done? If so, perhaps the slides are still around. If so, then we could still look at it.
In my opinion, with the evidence you have given me, and with my current (less than expert) knowledge, there is is really little evidence to support that the kidney was human. Just the opinion of two men who couldn't articulate the reasons for their arguments. |
Author: Thomas Ind
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 06:59 pm | | TIME OF DEATH
I think I have addressed most the issues discussed already so I want to post two new ones. If something else was started please prompt me to go back to it.
A lot of assumptions have been made on the time of death. Reading the reports it seems to be based on how cold or warm the first person to discover the body thought it was and how far rigor mortis was set in. I am no forensic pathologist but I wonder how accurate these methods are. What is the accepted error of these methods?
We need to find a forensic pathology book from the era to find out the common ways used to determine death. Was there a police surgeon's manual for example? When we have found this out we need to read contemporary text to look at the accuracy of these times. |
Author: Thomas Ind
Friday, 14 January 2000 - 07:32 pm | | ESTIMATED BLOOD LOSS OF POLLY NICHOLS
My last thought of the night is this. Many say that that there is a problem with the estimate of PN blood loss. I don't have my reference at hand but if I recall it was estimated to be around 500ml (I don't know the exact figure). This was thought to be too little a blood loss consistent with a throat cut suggesting strangulation as a cause of death followed by the throat cut.
When I was younger I performed a study with a colleague which was not published but presented at the Royal Society of Medicine by my coleague only 2 years ago. This study was prompted by a midwife who asked me for some help with her MSc thesis for the University of Surrey (1994). None of the work has been published in medical journals but both have been recorded (One at Surrey Uni and one at the RSM). I am not giving details of these people as I doubt they would want JTRologists pestering them.
The midwife performed an excellent study. The background is that at the end of every birth a midwife estimates the amount of blood lost on the bed and sheets. She does this as haemorrhage is one of the most important causes of maternal mortality and often goies unrecognised. She experimented by using human blood donated to the transfusions service that had not been used and had expired (and therefore about to be thrown away). She use whole blood (not the packed concentrated cells normally used for transfusion). She emptied different known quantities of blood on a delivery room floor mimicking a delivery setting and asked 22 midwives to come in at different times and estimate how much blood was in the room.
Well it is a big document and I haven't got the inclination to give all the results but I will give the 22 different results for a known quantity of 1100ml. 700, 500, 400, 550, 600, 900, 350, 1000, 550, 700, 800, 800, 700, 800, 800, 600, 800, 500, 850, 1000, 400, 400. As you can see, these medical professionals (it took 5 years minimum to train as a midwife until recently) all grossly underestimated the blood loss. To give you an idea, 500ml is enough to cause symptoms of acute blood loss but not enough to cause death. 1000 is termed a massive haemorrhage and is life threatening. In most cases the midwives failed to recognise this.
Well my study presented to the RSM 2 years ago was with a colleague now working in Australia. We were actually looking at estimates in birthing pools and had devised a way of accurately measuring this within a few minutes. One of the findings though was that doctors (more inportant obstetricians who regularly make important estimates of blood loss)were worse than midwives in their estimates and underestimated further. I don't have the exact data to hand. Furthermore, in water, everyone underestimated even more.
Now rain was a factor with PN washing away some blood, if a doctor estimated 500ml (I will be very embarrased if I got this totally wrong) after some blood was washed away and in water, then by these studies the total blood loss could have been up to 3 litre (almost the total body volume of blood.
Any comments? |
Author: Wolf
Saturday, 15 January 2000 - 02:38 am | | Tom, you said, "just because someone is a professional does not mean they are correct. Everything must be challanged..." I quite agree but you will find that challanging some of the strongly held tenants of Ripperology can be a little harry at times. I have done some work on trying to bring some new insight into the times of death of both Annie Chapman and Mary Kelly and have found little support and much condemnation so tread softly here.
There was no rain on the night that Polly Nichols was murdered so none of the blood was washed away. It was found, when her body was moved, that the back of her clothing was saturated with blood and had apparently acted as a sponge hence the lack of visual blood at the scene.
Jeff D., one observation on the throat cuts, in all the cases, except Stride, the throats were cut down to the bone or at least deep enough to sever the arteries on both sides of the neck. Chapman and Kelly showed signs that an attempt at decapitation had occured. All of this seems to point to something more than just wanting to stop being splashed with blood.
Wolf. |
Author: Spellcheck
Saturday, 15 January 2000 - 02:46 am | | challanged = challenged
tenants = tenets |
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