Forensic Medicine and Anthropology Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The first suture to close is the mid-frontal (metopic) suture.

The metopic suture runs down the middle of the frontal bone, between its two halves. It usually fuses in infancy, by about the second year of life, so a persisting metopic suture in an adult skull is unusual.

The sagittal, coronal and lambdoid sutures of the vault close much later, gradually from the third decade onwards, which is why their state of closure is used, with caution, to estimate the age of adult skulls. (The paper's 'human skill' means the human skull.)

Answer: B

Pupae of the housefly indicate a time since death of about 5 days.

Flies lay eggs on a body within hours of death. In warm weather the housefly's eggs hatch in 8 to 24 hours, the maggots feed and grow for about four to five days, and then they move off and turn into pupae; the adult fly emerges a few days after that. So finding pupae on a body in summer places death at roughly five days.

One day is too early (only eggs or young maggots), and by 8 to 10 days adult flies would have emerged and empty pupal cases would be found. Cold weather lengthens every stage.

Answer: B

The change that is not seen is an increase in intraocular pressure.

After death the intraocular pressure falls, because fluid is no longer secreted into the eye, and the eyeball becomes soft within a few hours.

The other three are genuine early changes. The corneal reflex is lost at death. Within minutes the blood in the retinal vessels breaks into segments as circulation stops (segmentation, or 'trucking', of the retinal blood columns). And potassium in the vitreous humour rises steadily as cells release it, which is used to estimate the time since death.

Answer: B

Age can be estimated with Gustafson's formula.

Gustafson (1950) estimated adult age from six changes in a tooth: attrition, secondary dentine, periodontal attachment, cementum apposition, root resorption and root transparency. Each is scored and the total is put into a regression formula to give an age.

The other names are linked with stature, not age: Pearson (1899), Trotter and Gleser (1952) and Dupertuis and Hadden (1951) all gave regression formulae for estimating living height from the lengths of long bones.

Answer: B

Root transparency increases with increase in age.

From about the age of 30, the dentinal tubules in the root become progressively filled with mineral, starting at the apex and moving upwards. The dentine then transmits light and looks transparent, and the transparent zone lengthens steadily with age.

Because the change is gradual and little affected by disease, root dentine transparency is one of Gustafson's criteria and is regarded as one of the most reliable dental indicators of adult age. It does not decrease, stay constant or reverse with age, so the other options are wrong.

Answer: C

'Greek love' is a name for buggery.

Buggery, or sodomy, is anal intercourse. Forensic medicine texts note its old name of 'Greek love', from the practices described in ancient Greece. In Indian law it was dealt with under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code as an unnatural offence.

Bestiality is sexual intercourse with an animal, cunnilingus is oral stimulation of the female genitals, and lesbianism is sexual relations between women, also known as tribadism or 'Sapphism', a name taken from the poet Sappho. None of these is called Greek love.

Answer: D

The findings are suggestive of a homicidal death.

Cadaveric spasm is the instant stiffening of muscles at the moment of death, without primary relaxation, seen in violent deaths under great emotional stress. When a person shoots himself and dies at once, the weapon may be found firmly clenched in the hand, which is strong evidence of suicide.

Where the hand shows no cadaveric spasm and a country-made pistol (katta) simply lies at the scene, the weapon may have been placed there to make a murder look like suicide. Natural death would not involve a firearm at all, and an accident with such a weapon is far less likely than a staged scene.

Answer: A

The condition is postmortem caloricity.

Normally a body cools after death. In postmortem caloricity the temperature rises or stays high for the first couple of hours, because heat production continues while heat regulation has failed. It is seen in deaths from heat stroke, septicaemia and infections such as cholera, and in poisoning with convulsant drugs such as strychnine, where muscle activity before death produced great heat.

Lividity is the settling of blood in dependent parts, rigidity (rigor mortis) is stiffening of the muscles, and algor mortis is the normal cooling of the body, the opposite of caloricity.

Answer: A

The most suitable sample is the sternum.

In drowning, water containing diatoms is inhaled, and if the heart is still beating the diatoms pass through the lungs into the circulation and lodge in distant organs, including the bone marrow. Marrow from a bone such as the sternum or femur is the best sample, because it is enclosed in bone and cannot be contaminated by water entering the body after death.

Lungs and intestine can receive diatoms passively when a dead body lies in water, so diatoms there do not prove drowning; the liver is a possible site but less protected than marrow.

Answer: D

The test that does not assess the heart is Winslow's test.

Winslow's test checks for respiration: a bowl of water or a mirror placed on the chest is watched for movement or misting. It tests whether breathing has stopped, not circulation.

The other three test for circulation. In Magnus's test a ligature tied round a finger causes bluish swelling beyond it if blood is circulating. In the diaphanous test the fingers, held against a strong light, look red if circulation persists. In Icard's test fluorescein injected under the skin spreads and stains the body if circulation continues.