When examining a victim of violence, no forensic pathologist is fulfilling his role when one confines the report to merely a numbered lists of wounds found on the corpse. Of course, the nature, exact position, direction, and dimensios of every
injury
should be described, and it should be photographed. However, the distinction between antemortem and postmortem injuries and their proper timing is one of the cardinal problems of forensic medicine. it help not only to convict guilty but also to
acquit
persons who are suspect but in factnot guilty. The cause of death is sometimes of less importance than the recostruction of events, which may become possible with careful examination of the wounds and their proper timing.
As with time of death, it can be a very difficult matter in forensic medical investigations to determine whether a wound found at autopsy was inflicted before or after death, and if ante-mortem, how long before death was it sustained?
Unfortunately, as
with so many problems, biological variability introduces a wide range of uncertainty about the time of wound, so that a range of probabilities can be offered, but never a definite time interval.
Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss prose and cons about various dating methods of ante-mortem wound that have been published.
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