L'œuvre de Bruce Goldfarb explore des récits historiques fascinants et souvent négligés, en particulier dans les domaines de la médecine et de la criminalistique. Il possède une capacité remarquable à découvrir les histoires inédites derrière des innovations significatives, révélant l'élément humain et les détails complexes qui ont façonné notre compréhension. Grâce à des recherches méticuleuses et une prose captivante, Goldfarb met en lumière les histoires cachées et les pionniers dont les contributions ont profondément influencé les connaissances modernes.
The unlikely tale of Frances Glessner Lee and her revolutionary work in forensic science through the creation of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of dollhouse-sized crime scene dioramas that she used to teach homicide investigators.
Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962), born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity. Yet she became the mother of modern forensics and was instrumental in elevating homicide investigation to a scientific discipline. Frances Glessner Lee learned forensic science under the tutelage of pioneering medical examiner Magrath - he told her about his cases, gave her access to the autopsy room to observe post-mortems and taught her about poisons and patterns of injury. A voracious reader too, Lee acquired and read books on criminology and forensic science - eventually establishing the largest library of legal medicine. Lee went on to create The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death - a series of dollhouse-sized crime scene dioramas depicting the facts of actual cases in exquisitely detailed miniature - and perhaps the thing she is most famous for. Celebrated by artists, miniaturists and scientists, the Nutshell Studies are a singularly unusual collection. They were first used as a teaching tool in homicide seminars at Harvard Medical School in the 1930s, and then in 1945 the homicide seminar for police detectives that is the longest-running and still the highest-regarded training of its kind in America. Both of which were established by the pioneering Lee. In 18 TINY DEATHS, Bruce Goldfarb weaves Lee's remarkable story with the advances in forensics made in her lifetime to tell the tale of the birth of modern forensics
Taking readers inside the nation's preeminent Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the author, who spent ten years with the Maryland OCME, explores the year-by-year story of a pioneer in the field of forensic medicine that is now chronically in crisis