The Evolution of Forensic Science
23
However, even the most scientifically inclined
and professionally oriented
forensic practitioners have historically overestimated their ability to draw
grand conclusions from limited data. This may follow, at least in part, from
the literary beginnings of criminal investigation. In these stories, fictional
detectives were able to recreate an entire detailed sequence of events from a
few small clues. An example is found in one of Voltaire’s lesser-known works,
Zadig
, written in 1747. The chapter entitled “The Dog and the Horse” takes
place in ancient Babylon (Voltaire, 1748).
Zadig was walking through the woods when he encountered the Queen’s
eunuch and the King’s huntsman. They inquired anxiously whether he had
seen the Queen’s dog and the King’s horse. Shaking his head, Zadig asked
if they
were referring to a bitch, slightly lame with long ears who had recently
had puppies, and a horse with small hoofs, about five feet tall and with a
tail three and a half feet long. Although he vehemently denied it, the eunuch
and the huntsman were in no doubt that Zadig had stolen both the King’s
horse and the Queen’s dog, else how could he have known such details? He
was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to flogging and banishment to
Siberia.
However, the sentence had scarcely been
passed when the missing ani-
mals reappeared. The sentence was reduced to a heavy fine to punish Zadig
for declaring that he had not seen what he had seen and he was allowed to
plead his case as follows:
“… I noticed the tracks of an animal in the sandy soil, which I readily
took to be those of a little dog. Some long but delicate furrows, traced in
the sand wherever it was raised between the prints of the paws, showed me
that it was a bitch with hanging dugs, which must therefore have had
puppies a few days before. Other
tracks of a different kind, which always
appeared to have brushed the sand at either side of the forefeet, showed me
that its ears were very long; and as I noticed that the sand was always more
deeply impressed by one paw than by the other three, I concluded that our
august Queen’s little bitch was a trifle lame, if I may dare to say so.
“As for the horse which
belongs to the King of Kings, you must know
that as I was walking along the paths of this wood, I noticed some horseshoe
prints all at equal distances.… In a straight stretch of path only seven feet
wide, the dust had been lightly brushed from the trees on both sides at a
distance of three and a half feet from the centre of the path. ‘This horse.’
Said I, ‘has a tail three and a half feet long, which must have swept off the
dust on both sides as it waved.’ The trees formed an arcade five feet high.
When I noticed that some of the
leaves were newly fallen, I deduced that
the horse must have touched them, and that he was therefore five feet high
also. As for the bit it must be made of twenty-three carat gold, because the
horse had rubbed the bosses against a stone which I knew to be touchstone,
and which I therefore tested And finally I judged from the marks which the
8127/frame/ch02 Page 23 Friday, July 21, 2000 11:51 AM
24
Principles and Practice of Criminalistics
horseshoes had left on a different kind of stone
that it was shod with silver
of eleven deniers proof.”
The king’s court was so greatly impressed by Zadig’s deductive powers
that he was promptly vindicated and his gold returned.
In scientific endeavors, advances are commonly foretold in fiction before
becoming reality. Forensic science is no exception and the influence of detec-
tive literature on the development of modern forensic science cannot be
underestimated. Edmund Locard, to whom the concept of transfer is attrib-
uted, gives direct credit to Arthur Conan Doyle, innovator
of the fictional
detective Sherlock Holmes, as the true instigator of modern forensic science.
In “The Analysis of Dust Traces,” a three part series published in 1930 in
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
