Forensic Chemistry

Abstract

MR. A. LUCAS, who is the director of the Government Analytical Laboratory and Assay Office, Cairo, claims that his book is the first of its kind in English, with the possible exception of a small work on legal chemistry which he published in 1920, out of which the present work has grown. In a limited sense the claim may be valid, although the distinction between forensic chemistry and forensic medicine, on which latter subject there are many well-established treatises, is one of degree rather than of kind. Hitherto works on forensic medicine have included forensic chemistry. The expert on forensic medicine has usually been a medical man with knowledge and experience of the detection of chemical substances, such as poisons, which may form the subject of criminal investigation. Strictly speaking, the two branches are, however, perfectly distinct, and there has been a growing tendency within recent years to differentiate them. The criminal who contemplates murder, for example, has far more means at his disposal nowadays than formerly. Science has furnished him with methods unknown to former generations, and these can be combated and checked only by methods of science. It was inevitable, therefore, that public security should require the establishment of a special class of expert whose duty should be the study and application of methods of detection and recognition by chemical means of the many agents and appliances which may now form the subject of criminal inquiry.

Forensic Chemistry.

By A. Lucas. Pp. viii + 268. (London: Edward Arnold and Co., 1921.) 15s. net.