32
Principles and Practice of Criminalistics
scientist, Schönbein developed the first presumptive test for blood. It was
based on the ability of heme to oxidize hydrogen peroxide, making it foam.
Around the same time, the Dutch scientist Van Deen developed another
presumptive blood test using a West Indian shrub called guaiac. Both tests,
however, depended on
the oxidizing property of heme, and thus had the
limitation of sometimes producing false positives with substances other than
blood. This was also true of the luminol test, originated by Walter Specht in
1937, and remains a caveat with all presumptive blood tests used even today.
The next major advance in serology occurred at the turn of the century when
Paul Uhlenhuth, a German professor, developed the antigen–antibody pre-
cipitin test for species. Now it was possible to at least tell
which
, if not
who
.
The technique was not refined for forensic use until the 1960s, when
Maurice
Müller, a Swiss chemist, adapted the Ouchterlony antigen–antibody diffusion
test for species testing (Thorwald, 1964; 1966; Gaensslen, 1983).
The first whisperings of a blood test that could indicate
who
were heard
in 1900, when Karl Landsteiner first discovered human blood groups. This
advance was so significant to medicine (it enabled the determination of
donor–recipient compatibility for blood transfusions) that it earned him the
Nobel prize in 1930. As a relatively minor sidelight, ABO testing enabled, for
the first time, some differentiation between which
human beings could have
left biological evidence at a scene. Landsteiner, along with various collabo-
rators, pioneered much of the basic research that would lead to serological
typing systems. In 1915, Leon Lattes, professor at the Institute of Forensic
Medicine in Turin, Italy, developed the first antibody-based test for ABO
blood groups, thus greatly expanding their utility. Max Richter adapted Land-
steiner’s technique to type dried stains, one of the first
instances of specifically
developing and validating a technique for use in forensic situations. In 1923,
Vittorio Siracusa, working under Lattes, developed the absorption–elution
test for ABO typing of blood stains. In 1930, Franz Holzer extended ABO
typing further with a refinement of the absorbtion–inhibition method that
was subsequently adopted by crime laboratories. Weiner and colleagues con-
tributed another major advance in 1958, when they introduced the use of
H-lectin to positively determine blood type O (no naturally occurring human
antibodies
to blood type O exist, as they do against the A and B blood types)
(Thornwald, 1966; Gaensslen, 1983).
Of course, biological material other than blood is also frequently shed
or deposited in connection with a crime. In 1839, H. Bayard published the
first reliable procedures for the microscopic detection of sperm (Figure 2.3).
The acid phosphatase test, a widely used method for the presumptive detec-
tion of
seminal fluid, was developed by Frank Lundquist in 1945. Along with
Meüller’s suggestion in 1928 of using salivary amylase as an indicator for
saliva, this completed the constellation of presumptive tests for the most
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The Evolution of Forensic Science
33
common body fluids that might be found at a crime scene. Additional tests
for seminal fluid, including seminal protein p30 (prostate specific antigen;
PSA), have been developed more recently (Gaensslen, 1983).
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, a number of additional
antigenic markers were developed and adapted for forensic use. With each
additional marker, it was possible to exclude an ever-greater segment of the
population as possible donors of a biological sample. As blood-typing systems
were being developed, it was also realized that the same antigenic markers
were present on other cell types such as buccal cells in saliva and sperm cells
in semen. In most cases they were also detectable
as free antigens in body
fluids and secretions. These discoveries greatly expanded the usefulness of
biological typing systems to the forensic community. In the 1950s and 1960s,
advances in immunology and biochemistry led to the development of two
more classes of serological markers. Testing systems were developed for sev-
eral isoantibodies and also for a number of isoenzyme systems. It was not
until the beginning of the next decade, however, that the now vast body of
work on serological typing systems was consolidated. This was accomplished
under the direction of Brian Culliford of the Metropolitan Police Laboratory
in London. His book,
The Examination and Typing of Bloodstains in the Crime
Laboratory
, published in 1971, is considered responsible for disseminating
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