Murderers and Medical Detectives - GENT0911


	Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
	School: School of History and Philosophy
	Course Outline: School of History and Philosophy
	Campus: Kensington Campus
	Career: Undergraduate
	Units of Credit: 6
	EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)
	Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 3
	Enrolment Requirements:
	Excluded: All CRIM courses, SLSP2820
	Excluded: CRIM3004, HIST2820
	CSS Contribution Charge:Band 1 (more info)
	Tuition Fee:See Tuition Fee Schedule
	Further Information: See Class Timetable

Description

How many people in the past, or even today have "got away with murder"?

We will be looking at this questions, using a historical perspective to explain how the public utilisation of society's norms and expectations, together with developments in medical science, went hand in hand with increasingly sophisticated methods of murder and thence increasingly efficient methods of detection.

Some of the topics will include: the arsenic 'epidemic' creating a toxic environment in the 19th century; criminal 'types' and how this notion impeded detection; doctors as murderers; changing methods of forensic detection and how miscarriages of justice may have occurred because of the rising status of science and the expert witness.