2.3 Principles and Procedures of Autopsy

The autopsy (the post-mortem examination) — the death's surgical investigation: the types: the medico-legal (the court's-and-police's requisition — the unnatural death's mandatory examination) vs the pathological (the hospital's disease-inquiry); the procedure's sequence(the exam's list):1. The external examination (the clothes; the identification's marks; the injuries' mapping; the natural signs' notation).2. The internal examination (the cavities' opening: the head, the chest, the abdomen; the organs' systematic examination — the injuries' internal tracking).3. The evidence's collection (U2.5's samples).4. The documentation (the protocol's writing; the photographs; the diagrams).5. The opinion (the cause: the immediate-and-contributory; the manner's inference; the time- since-death's estimation — the post-mortem interval's signs: the cooling, the rigor, the livor, the decomposition). The medico-legal principles: the completeness (the no-shortcut rule); the objectivity (the facts-and-opinions separated); the chain (the samples' custody).