Alfred Swaine Taylor (11 December 1806 in

Northfleet Northfleet is a town in the borough of Gravesham in Kent, England. It is located immediately west of Gravesend, and on the border with the Borough of Dartford. Northfleet has its own railway station on the North Kent Line, just east of Ebbsfl ...

, Kent – 27 May 1880 in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

) was an English

toxicologist Toxicology is a scientific discipline, overlapping with biology, chemistry, pharmacology, and medicine, that involves the study of the adverse effects of chemical substances on living organisms and the practice of diagnosing and treating ex ...

and medical writer, who has been called the "father of British forensic medicine". He was also an early experimenter in photography. Grave of Alfred Swaine Taylor in Highgate Cemetery

Grave of Alfred Swaine Taylor in Highgate Cemetery

Career

Taylor studied medicine at

Guy's Hospital Guy's Hospital is an NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in central London. It is part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and one of the institutions that comprise the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. ...

and

St Thomas's Hospital St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS teaching hospital in Central London, England. It is one of the institutions that compose the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. Administratively part of the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foun ...

and was appointed Lecturer in Medical Jurisprudence at Guy's Hospital in 1831. In 1832 he succeeded Alexander Barry as joint Lecturer on Chemistry with Arthur Aitken. He published textbooks on

medical jurisprudence Medical jurisprudence or legal medicine is the branch of science and medicine involving the study and application of scientific and medical knowledge to legal problems, such as inquests, and in the field of law. As modern medicine is a legal c ...

and

toxicology Toxicology is a scientific discipline, overlapping with biology, chemistry, pharmacology, and medicine, that involves the study of the adverse effects of chemical substances on living organisms and the practice of diagnosing and treating expo ...

, contributed to the ''

Dublin Quarterly Journal Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 cen ...

'' and medical periodicals, and edited the ''

Medical Gazette Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, and Health promotion ...

''. He was the main dissector of

Lavinia Edwards Lavinia Edwards (died 1833, also known as Eliza Edwards or Miss Walstein) was a British actress. She largely played in tragedies, and shortly into her career, became homeless. She died at age 24 of lung inflammation. When her body was dissected, ...

's body, a woman who was determined to have been born male, and he wrote extensively about her. He appeared as expert witness in several widely reported murder cases. He also developed the use of hyposulphate of lime as a fixing agent for photography. He is buried at

Highgate Cemetery Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in north London, England. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West and East Cemeteries. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for some of the people buried there as ...

Works

*''On the Art of Photogenic Drawing'', 1840 *''The Elements of Medical Jurisprudence Interspersed with a copious selection of curious and instructive cases and analyses of opinions delivered at coroners' inquests'', 1843 *''Manual of Medical Jurisprudence'', 1844 *''Medical jurisprudence'', 1845 *''A thermometric table on the scales of fahrenheit, centigrade and Reaumur, compressing the most remarkable phenomena connected with temperature'', 1845 *''On the Temperature of the Earth and Sea in Reference to the Theory of Central Heat'', 1846 *''On poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence and medicine'', 1848 *''On poisoning by strychnia, with comments on the medical evidence at the trial of William Palmer for the murder of John Parsons Cook'', 1856 *''The principles and practice of medical jurisprudence'', 1865

References

External links

*
Picture
at Science and Society website *Coley, Noel G.
'Alfred Swaine Taylor, MD, FRS (1806–1880): forensic toxicologist'
''Medical History'', 1991, 35:409–427 *Earles, M. P.
‘Taylor, Alfred Swaine (1806–1880)’
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 20 Dec 2007 *Flanagan, Robert James and Katherine Watson
'Alfred Swaine Taylor MD FRS (1806–1880)'
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Alfred Swaine 1806 births 1880 deaths Burials at Highgate Cemetery 19th-century English medical doctors English medical writers Medical jurisprudence Fellows of the Royal Society British toxicologists