The doctor who showed that a dead man does not reflect how he died

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From the moment in which the human being had enough awareness to contemplate his life he also obsessed with the inevitable conclusion of the same.Throughout the millennia, civilizations have contemplated death and asked what leads to the extinction of life.

The Egyptians already practiced a rudimentary version of the autopsy, studying the organs that were extracted from the bodies they prepared for mummification, but it was the Romans who first analyzed the nature of death in a legal context.Julio César's official autopsy in 44 A.C.It was rigorous enough to establish that the second of the 23 stabs received by the dictator had been the mortal, but little could do to determine which of the senators had led to that decisive blow.

With the passing of the centuries such as the doctor Ibn Zuhr-which formalized the dissection methods for autopsies in al-Andalus-, the Chinese song ci-author of the first forensic manual during the Song dynasty-, and the Italian Giovanni Battista Morgagni–Padre of modern pathological anatomy - contributed to the shy advance of legal medicine.However, it was not until the end of the 19th century that the first professional forensics applied scientific techniques to this branch.Pioneers like Rudolf Virchow in Austria, Alexandre Lacassagne in France and Pedro Mata Fontanet in Spain led their respective national schools, taking out the necrology of darkness and taking it to universities.

Face of a child strangled by his father.Hugo Dunkel

The period between 1875 and 1925 undoubtedly supposed the golden age of the development of legal medicine but the technological limitations and knowledge of that era made great errors inevitable.The superstitions of the past had been remote but the pseudosciences abounded.Many believed in frantology, theory that states that the form of the skull can be related to the personality - and criminal tendencies - of a person.In France the Bertillon system, which assured that the difference between a civilian and a psychopath was detected through the size of the limbs, led to the arrest of more than 240 people in 1884.

At the beginning of the century, however, the great debate that affected the forensic world focused on expressions on the faces of the dead.Why was it that some deceased appeared with inexpressive faces, while others clearly recorded pain, sadness or terror?French and Italian legal medicine schools were clear: the bodies that did not show emotion had died in peace, for natural deaths, while those registered agony had come to their end violently.Forensic eminences from both countries ruled out wasting time with corpses autopsies "with quiet faces" in case of doubt about the nature of death;It was evident that they were not victims of a crime.

The skeptical Portuguese

In Portugal Dr. João Azevedo Neves (1877-1955), then a young director of the newly created Institute of Legal Medicine of Lisbon (IMLL), had doubts about the hypothesis of his Gaulian and Italian companions.

"Azevedo Neves was an enlightened, a great innovator," explains to El Español his eventual heir in office, João Pinheiro, vice president of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forens."At the beginning of the 20th century Lisbon only had a morgue in a dilapidated state, where the popular custom allowed walkers to visit to curly the bodies exposed to the public.Azevedo Neves ended all that when the institute created, which supplanted the morbid with the rational and bet on progress ".

Lisbon Institute of Legal Medicine Institute.-Hugo Dunkel

That desire for rationality and progress caused the Portuguese doctor to take interest in the debate on the facial expressions of the deceased.Specialized in Anatomy and Legal Medicine in Germany, Azevedo Neves had already directed the pathological anatomy laboratory of the main hospital of the Portuguese, and hundreds of corpses had passed over their autopsy table - hundreds hundreds, civilians run over by trams, sailors drowned inEl Tajo, dockers dead in brawls in the bars of La Ribeira–.I was not sure that the faces of the deceased betrayed the nature of their deaths.

Resolving end the contentious through the scientific method, between 1913 and 1945 Azevedo Neves made an exhaustive study of the faces of the deceased who reached the IMLL.To facilitate his subsequent analysis, he ordered to make mortuary masks of the bodies, making molds in the gypsum of the faces and thus preserving their expressions for perpetual observation.Without being aware of this, over three decades created what today is a collection of 300 Forensic Portraits in 3-D, the largest and best documented in the world.

"There are small collections of mortuary masks in other countries, but none has medical, complete and detailed reports, about the people who portray and the way they died," says Pinheiro."This is an absolutely unique collection".

Portraits of death

To ensure the rigor of his study Azevedo Neves needed corpses whose faces would not have suffered manipulation or at the time of death or in the later period.

"He decided only to make strangulated masks, because the same suspension that caused death kept the faces away from any physical element that could distort the expressions they showed," explains the researcher Carlos Branco, restorer of the masks and commissioner of Facies Mortis: emotions, life and faces of death, exhibition in Porto that presents the heads before the public for the first time."95% of the collection are suicides that hanged; the rest are victims of homicide".

According to Branco, when Azevedo Neves found a corpse that met these particular characteristics, ordered that the portrait in plaster be carried out.

"The photographic technology of the time did not give for this type of study, so the institute had a team of artists who went to the removal of the body to draw the crime scene, as they also drew any interesting element found on the body -Wounds and bruises, but also lunar and even tattoos ".

"The plaster molds resulted in an incredibly detailed portrait in three dimensions.It is shocking for us today, but in the creation process the mask was full of biological material of the body, so those we keep in the collection have a lot of hair, and sometimes skin, belonging to the deceased, embedded in them.They are extremely realistic, a mixture between science and art ".

Made of the mask, Azevedo Neves proceeded to classify the expression on the face according to an expressometer of five categories: smiling, inexpressive or calm, sad, sore, terrified.French and Italian forensic schools considered that the bodies registered by the first two expressions had died from natural causes, while those who showed the last three were victims of violent deaths.The collection accumulates dozens of specimens of each emotion, some heads with perverse grimaces of apparent happiness, others showing the serenity of a half -afternoon nap, and others with the faces full of agony.

The Portuguese doctor used the files prepared by their legal doctors to determine if the captured expressions coincided with the nature of the deaths of the deceased.

"The discipline and thoroughness of the doctors of the Institute was absolute, and the reports that prepared for Portuguese justice were extremely detailed," says Branco, who points out that the forensic files that accompany the masks not only establish the cause of the death of the deceased, but also include pieces that can be used as evidence - from the rope used for hanging, to samples of the clothing that the dead was carrying to facilitate its eventual identification in case its name was unknown -.In many cases there are even skin samples preserved in formaldehyde, including the neck part where the mark of a rope and the tattoo of a woman waving the Portuguese Flag was printed.

What do the faces tell us?

Reinforced by the accumulated data over twenty years, in 1933 Azevedo Neves presented the conclusions of his particular study before a Congress of European forensics in Brussels.

"The hypothesis defended by the Gauls threw by land," explains Branco."Loaded with his masks and the statistics collected through his analysis, he showed that the vast majority of the dead had inexpressive faces, the result of the natural relaxation of the muscles in the period after death".

"He also showed that some deceased with smiling faces had died violently, while others with faces full of sadness had perished for natural causes.Through examples numerous enough to establish guidelines, he could definitely conclude that there was no relationship between the expression of the deceased and the nature of his death, banishing that theory of legal medicine definitely ".

But then, why some bodies have such emotional faces?

Branco affirms that, with the study of facial muscles and the best understanding of the chemical change that occurs in the body after death, today it is known that in some cases the facial muscles return to the positions to which they were most accustomedWhen Mortis rigor appears about three or four hours after death.

"People who smile a lot in life sometimes ends up smiling in death," concludes the researcher.

Testimony of an era

Although his conclusions were accepted by his fellow members in 1933, for unknown reasons Azevedo Neves continued adding new masks to his collection until 1945.

"He was a tireless man, interested in everything," explains Branco."At the same time as the Institute, he carried out his studies and taught at the University, and was also a deputy in the Courts, Minister of Commerce and even foreign affairs.We assume that he continued expanding the collection because he recognized how important it was at a scientific level ".

After the death of the doctor, however, the mortuary masks were forgotten in the basements of the Institute in Lisbon until the fusion of all the Forensic Centers of Portugal in the IMMLCF in 2001.The rationalization of the dependencies and the cataloging of the collections led to the reappearance of the plaster heads, blackened by the dust, but in exceptional state of conservation, next to the archives that told the sad stories of the people who portrayed.Despite being in the formal language of legal medicine, documents serve as a testimony of day -to -day tragedies in the Lisbon of the beginning of the century.

Judicial evidence.The rope used in suicide, and a preserved sample of the skin of the neck where it left its brand.-Hugo Dunkel

The prostitute of the Alto Bairro, strangled by an enraged customer with a silk rope.

The old woman who decides to commit suicide about the pain caused by her illness, but that she cares so much about the well -being of her cat who leaves a note fixed to her shirt asking someone to take care of him after his death.

The father accused of having committed a robbery that decides to "recover his honor" hanging himself in the dungeon and leaving a letter to his widow asking not to marry "out of respect in death who was your husband in life".

And the unknown newborn, suffocated with a linen cloth and found in the Eduardo VII park in 1924.

In addition to the historical interest that raises, both Branco and Pinheiro, Vice President of the IMMLCF, highlight the incalculable scientific value of the collection, which will be exhibited in Spain in 2018.

"These masks are still tremendously useful when studying suicide by hanging, since they have preserved the tension of the 3D muscles, allowing observing details that are simply not appreciated through photographs," says Branco.

Pinheiro, meanwhile, points out that although legal medicine has advanced a lot since the era of Azevedo Neves, today many of the practices and protocols established by the doctor are still used by Porenses Lusos.

"Not everything is digital tools such as those seen in CSI programs," the doctor warns."The rigor of the description of the documents in this collection remains an example to follow for us.We are no longer accompanied by cartoonists, but we continue trying to document everything we see, and in the anatomical we continue to consult the documents of Azevedo Neves.Time passes, but the good methodology does not age ".

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