Murderers and Medical Detectives - GENT0911
Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
School: School of Humanities
Course Outline: School of Humanities Course Outlines
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: 1 (more info)
Tuition Fee: See Tuition Fee Schedule
Further Information: See Class Timetable
View course information for previous years.
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.
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.
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