Forensic Quote of the Week:

Internist: The doctor who knows everything, but does nothing

Surgeon: The doctor who knows nothing, but does everything

Pathologist: The doctor who knows everything, does everything, but is always too late

-Dr. Shaw Kai-Ping, Taiwanese Forensic Pathologist-

Yes, I’m in yet another 3-hour Friday evening lecture I dub Forensic Fridays, feeling ridiculously self-conscious here because, well, I’m blogging while the rest of the people are (I hope) are listening attentively and I’m wondering how long will pass before the person beside or behind me suspects that I’m not taking the Forensic Science module. Anyway, today’s lecture is on forensic pathology, by the aforementioned top Taiwanese forensic pathologist.

Half an hour into his rather heavily accented, but still somewhat comprehensible lecture, and I’ve already seen a good amount of human bones, mutilated body parts and other gory human parts, how fun… and proof that I’m definitely not adverse to looking at grotesque human remains, even after dinner. Maybe, if they add in the smell, it wouldn’t be so agreeable, but that remains to be seen.

(yet more bone fragments are flashed on the screen)

Hmm… he’s not the most exciting speaker, last week’s Dr. Henry Lee’s talk was infinitely more exciting with all his random questions and gift-giving, and his stories about his involvement in the Clinton, O. J. Simpson, and Phil Spector cases, and how they always call his mum when he refuses to take a case. Don’t know whether he is joking, but certainly quite amusing. He was quite animated throughout, speaking with a strange Chinese accent mixed with American slang-ish words, not surprising since he’s one of those people who have to testify in an American court, especially in high-profiles cases, where the lawyers tend to be pretty nasty.

(yet more dead bodies are shown)

Oh well, the lectures have been sort of alternating between moderately interesting and very excitimg, though with the common theme of mostly dead bodies, or bloody crime scenes. There was one lecture with fingerprint matching, in which I smuggled out the sample prints and spent the rest of the night matching the prints myself, while the others head to the lab to develop their own prints, which I technically can’t go because, as I said, I’m not a registered member of this module.

(Hmm… he just mentioned water poisoning, a most interesting method of poisoning someone)

(Ooo… cocaine/heroin pellet from someone’s stomach, you know, from the drug trafficking method of smuggling drugs by swallowing pellets before a trip, and vomiting them out at the destination. And, because some of them die when the pellets burst in the stomach, the forensic pathologist has the privilege of extracting them… heh)

(LOL, he used the word “wet chicken” to describe the drug withdrawal symptom we commonly call “cold turkey“)

(OK… he just sung “Twinkle… Twinkle… Little Star to describe drug impurities deposits in the alveolus in drug abusers)

Hmm… we’re just over halfway through the lecture, and it’s break time at the moment. I don’t think I will continue to bore you with commentary and remarks for the second half, so, yeah, this is it for my remarks on Forensic Fridays.