Citation

Summers WC. Yale J. Biol. Med. 1999; 72(6): 409-419.

Affiliation

Department of Therapeutic Radiology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. william.summers@yale.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11138936

PMCID

PMC2579034

Abstract

Robert van Gulik was a respected Dutch sinologist and author who first translated a collection of traditional Chinese detective stories into English and then created additional fictional stories based on the same characters and setting in the Tang dynasty. One of these stories, The Chinese Nail Murders, draws on van Gulik's professional interest in law and his knowledge of early Chinese works on forensic medicine. This novel develops a common theme in Chinese detective fiction, murder by a nail wound to the head. The difficulty in detection of this mode of violence posed a particular problem for the examining magistrate because postmortem examination was mostly limited to external observations. This essay compares the development of Chinese and Western forensic medicine in the context of the nail murder motif.

Language: en