Något främmande i ditt blod : Undersökning av gifter i juridisk medicinska handböcker 1804-1838

Sammanfattning: Poison has been a problem for doctors for a very long time. During the 19th centuary forensic medicine started to establish themself as their own institution. This essay includes three parts. The first part investigates how poison exist in many different forms, and how doctors during the 19th centuary defined and classified them. Both the definition aswell as the classification of poison varied from doctor to doctor. But with time both the definition and classification started to become standardized, and played a part with the professionalization of poison. The second part investigate the poison in the body, and what kind of methods doctors used in order to prove it was poisoning. Many of the methods used was deemed uncertain, and couldn’t always be used as proof. The methods used towards the begining of the 19th centuary was used a couple decades later, even if the result from them were uncertain. A common problem for the doctors was that the symptoms from the poison shared similarities with different diseases. The third part investigate the doctors role in the forensic medicine field. The doctors towards the begining of the 19th centuary had a problem with their oaths. They were split between two different oaths, that made them sometimes unable to perform their duties a neutral party. Towards the 1830’s there were many reforms that was passed in the medicla field, and with thoes reforms the doctor ended up with only one oath to follow. Which made them able to stay as a neutral party.