Poroscopy: the Scrutiny of Sweat-pores for Identification

Abstract

AT the recent meeting of the British Medical Association some attention was directed to a method of criminal identification which has been used at Lyons and elsewhere. A fully illustrated account of it occurs in Les Archives d'Anthropologie criminelle for July, from which, after careful perusal, I cannot find that there is anything in the method that does not come I under the scope and practical working of dactylography. Dr. Locard has shown good reason why we should give more attention than has been usual to small patches of finger-prints, and to seek among the pores for what the ridges are too meagre to supply. Dr. James Scott, at Brighton, rightly describes “poroscopy” as founded on a study of the “impressions or orifices of the sweat ducts of the finger pulp, instead of the ridges.” But pores, the openings of sweat ducts, as printed impressions, cannot be studied quite apart from the ridges, or ridge substance, any more than the holes of which Pat's classic stockings consisted can be considered without reference to the slender remains of the fabric in which they occur.