Legal medicine in Switzerland.

The roots of legal medicine in Switzerland are closely linked to the name of Felix Platter. Born in 1536 as son of the famous humanist Thomas Platter he studied medicine at Basel and Montpellier at the time the most famous medical faculties of Europe. He received his doctoral degree at the age of 21 from the University of Basel. His career was straightforward and already in 1562 he was elected dean and in 1570 rector of the Basel university founded in 1460. As professor of practical medicine he was also appointed city physician of Basel in 1571. Despite the fact that Vesalius while correcting more than 200 Galenic errors in his revolutionary anatomical book ‘‘De humani corporis fabrica’’ published at Basel in 1543 and earning to him the reputation of being the founder of modern anatomy disclosed some relation to legal medicine it was Felix Platter who established legal medicine at Basel. He performed innumerable autopsies and elucidated the relation between a disturbed anatomical structure and the pathological function of that organ. His autopsy protocols were also the basis for the latter discipline of pathological anatomy. His scripture ‘‘De corporis humani structura et usu libri III’’ published in 1583 was considered an essential supplement to Vesal’s ‘‘Fabrica’’ (Fig. 1). Felix Platter’s reputation of being the ‘‘father of the helvetic legal medicine’’ (Dirnhofer) is founded on his oeuvre ‘‘Observationum in hominis affectibus’’ in which he detailed 680 cases of his 56 years of experience including many medico-legal observations and assessments of poisoning, morphology of gun shot and stab wounds and the analysis of blunt force in cases of battering and of downfall. In these observations Platter discloses a professional and scientific approach specific to legal medicine, e.g. the necessity for the medico-legal expert to examine the clothing of a victim and to investigate the scene of crime. Quite remarkable is his exact description of a misshaped bullet. Platter’s activity also comprised the elucidation of the sudden and unexpected death of infants, medical neglect and forensic gynaecology. Attributed to Platter is also the first description of the hymen and its morphology with regard to determine defloration. His casuistic contributions comprise all medico-legal fields of his time. His search of new findings was characterized by a maximum of objectivity and a high degree of self-criticism. He was well aware of the fact that a correct expertise was of the same value to an accused as the prescription of the correct drug to an ill man and that a wrong expertise makes an innocent a criminal.