Francis Thompson, Virchow’s Technique, and Bond’s Misreading

[Doctored Whatsit]

As Virchow is so heavily invoked in this thread, I thought it interesting to include this part of his treatise on postmortems:

Thank you for finding that, I knew that there was something like that somewhere, but I couldn't remember where!

[Fernglas]

The Ripper did not "follow the steps of a 1888 coursebook kidney extraction, step by step". If he had, docotors of the time would have been unified in saying he had a good deal of anatomical knowledge.

"I think that the murderer had no design on any particular organ of the body. He was not possessed of any great anatomical skill.' - Dr. G. W. Sequeira, surgeon

[Coroner] Would you consider that the person who inflicted the wounds possessed anatomical skill?
[Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown] He must have had a good deal of knowledge as to the position of the abdominal organs, and the way to remove them.
[Coroner] Would the parts removed be of any use for professional purposes?
[Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown] None whatever.
[Coroner] Would the removal of the kidney, for example, require special knowledge?
[Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown] It would require a good deal of knowledge as to its position, because it is apt to be overlooked, being covered by a membrane.
[Coroner] Would such a knowledge be likely to be possessed by some one accustomed to cutting up animals?
[Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown] Yes.

Hi Fiver!
Sorry, but you are mixing up things and willfully ignore some logical facts! Sequeira was an idiot if he truly believed that, there is no other way to say it. No amateur is able to find the kidney in the dark, on the knees somewhere on the street and under time pressure!
Fiver, please go to the next morgue, rent a corpse, go outside on the street, wait till it is really dark and then show us that you can extract one kidney in say 10 minutes like the Ripper did and no mess please, he did not leave one either. Since you, some others and Doc Sequeria posit that a random guy from the street can copy the Ripper, show us!

I can tell you directly you will not be able to copy the Ripper, because he made a near 1888 textbook extraction! Donīt you see it? It is a binaery situation. You either have the knowledge and skills of a medical student, doctor, highly experienced butcher, morgue assistant or you do not! If you do not, you cannot copy the Ripper, you lack the necessary skills. And the logical conclusion is that even if some doctors for whatever reason blabbed about how any random dude can do what the Ripper did, that is definitely wrong.
The post-mortem mutilations anyone could have done, but the kidney extraction in adverse conditions or the pericardium fenenstration no amateur with a knife can copy! Going in through the "front door" and taking out a kidney is not even all that easy when the person lies on a surgery table in a medical ward with all the light you need, just as a side info. The ripper also dipped his hand towards medical knowledge im smaller things. He circumvented the navel, something not needed when working on dead or animals, only when doing surgery on the living you do not cut the navel for several reasons. It is drilled into medical students to circumvent the navel early on. The Ripper also put the sygmoid part of the intenstines into the rectum, that is a pure surgery move when working in the lower body and the intestines are involved.

The Ripper had no need to circumvent the navel or put the sygmoid flexure into the rectum, but that is an automatism drilled into those learning surgery.
I think one of the biggest problems in the discussion is the fact many people do not want to call out a doctor even when he is blabbing obvious crap. Sequeira and Bond were either fools or willfully obfuscated the situation, which I believe to be the case instead them being stupid.

[Lewis C]

Hi Fiver!
Sorry, but you are mixing up things and willfully ignore some logical facts! Sequeira was an idiot if he truly believed that, there is no other way to say it. No amateur is able to find the kidney in the dark, on the knees somewhere on the street and under time pressure!

Sequoia is saying that the killer wasn't looking for any particular organ, which means that it isn't a question of finding the kidney, or any other organ. And he didn't say amateur, he said no great anatomical skill.

[The Rookie Detective]

What's the first thing the police would have done if all of the doctors had agreed that the killer possessed anatomical knowledge and/or surgical skill?

They would have thought the killer was a doctor.

And so by trying to underplay the Ripper's capabilities, it ensures the spotlight was kept away from raising any suspicion on the middle-class clinicians of the day.

The same could be said for the police.

The killer was clearly aware of the rotation of the police beats, but suspicion never really fell upon an acting or former police officer having been the killer.

Instead, the police threw the focus onto a random lunatic Jew in Kosminski.

The polices' deliberate attempt to paint the picture that the killer had to a lunatic; it kept the focus firmly on the working class community.

But the Ripper wasn't an openly visible lunatic going around eating food from the gutter; he was instead a calm unassuming calculated killer who had practised his blitz attacks and executed them to near perfection; excluding Stride, that he likely botched.

The various opinions of the clinicians at the time was never going to predominantly favour a killer with any medical skill and knowledge, because then it would have been a reason for the police to follow on and investigate that idea.

The opinions of the doctors at the time aren't worth the time of day unless the context of their words are comprehended and understood.

But if you were to ask a range of doctors and surgeons today what they think of the injuries the Ripper managed to literally make on the bodies of the victims, I would be confident that the majority would support the idea that the killer had anatomical knowledge and some skill with the knife, at the very least.

To claim that the killer had no anatomical knowledge and no skill with the knife, simply doesn't fit with the actual level of injuries the killer actually managed to inflict on his victims.

It doesn't take the subjective and/or bias opinion of a doctor at the time, to tell us what we can ascertain by looking at every injury in minute detail.

It's like a dodgy VAR decision whereby a player clearly loses their temper and aggressively goes into a tackle, and managing to catch the ankle of the other player, and injuring them in the process by snapping their ankle... but the referee then claiming the player had no intention to harm the other player.... despite the other guy's foot facing backwards.

The physical evidence that literally describes the actual injuries inflicted on the victims, overrules the subjective opinions of the doctors at the time.


The physical evidence can still be read and interpreted today, but by clinicians who have no bias or ulterior motive.


"They say I am doctor now, ha ha!"


Well rather ironically; it seems they actually didn't, because the medical "profession' at the time made sure of it.

"Nothing to see here, move along"

[Trevor Marriott]

Hi Fiver!
Sorry, but you are mixing up things and willfully ignore some logical facts! Sequeira was an idiot if he truly believed that, there is no other way to say it. No amateur is able to find the kidney in the dark, on the knees somewhere on the street and under time pressure!
Fiver, please go to the next morgue, rent a corpse, go outside on the street, wait till it is really dark and then show us that you can extract one kidney in say 10 minutes like the Ripper did and no mess please, he did not leave one either. Since you, some others and Doc Sequeria posit that a random guy from the street can copy the Ripper, show us!

I can tell you directly you will not be able to copy the Ripper, because he made a near 1888 textbook extraction! Donīt you see it? It is a binaery situation. You either have the knowledge and skills of a medical student, doctor, highly experienced butcher, morgue assistant or you do not! If you do not, you cannot copy the Ripper, you lack the necessary skills. And the logical conclusion is that even if some doctors for whatever reason blabbed about how any random dude can do what the Ripper did, that is definitely wrong.
The post-mortem mutilations anyone could have done, but the kidney extraction in adverse conditions or the pericardium fenenstration no amateur with a knife can copy! Going in through the "front door" and taking out a kidney is not even all that easy when the person lies on a surgery table in a medical ward with all the light you need, just as a side info. The ripper also dipped his hand towards medical knowledge im smaller things. He circumvented the navel, something not needed when working on dead or animals, only when doing surgery on the living you do not cut the navel for several reasons. It is drilled into medical students to circumvent the navel early on. The Ripper also put the sygmoid part of the intenstines into the rectum, that is a pure surgery move when working in the lower body and the intestines are involved.

The Ripper had no need to circumvent the navel or put the sygmoid flexure into the rectum, but that is an automatism drilled into those learning surgery.
I think one of the biggest problems in the discussion is the fact many people do not want to call out a doctor even when he is blabbing obvious crap. Sequeira and Bond were either fools or willfully obfuscated the situation, which I believe to be the case instead them being stupid.

I have provided a modern-day forensic pathologist Dr Michael Biggs, with a copy of the post-mortem reports on Chapman, Kelly and Eddowes and asked him if these showed medical knowledge in the removal of the organs. I have also asked him to comment on the Vyrchow method of the heart removal. Set out below are his replies

"It’s interesting how, over the years, many different murders have produced comments along the lines of the perpetrator having “medical” or “anatomical” knowledge in order to perform the “dissection” that was undertaken – although in reality the dissection is usually little more than mutilation.

Once you open up a body, it is relatively easy to cut, pull and tear bits and pieces out – the tricky bit is getting through the skin. So it would be feasible for someone without specific, pre-existing knowledge or skill to whip away certain trophies during the process of mutilation, and I wouldn’t deduce that the person had anatomical or medical knowledge, simply because there are missing bits. In fact, I would really only be suspecting anatomical/medical / surgical proficiency if everything were neat and tidy.

It is striking, though, from these accounts about bodies being left unattended/insecure, and being undressed/washed prior to the post-mortem examination. Nowadays, of course, bodies are placed in security-sealed body bags and escorted to secure mortuaries where they are booked in and locked away, with CCTV and alarms to protect the bodies until such as time as the post-mortem can take place. But back then it seems that if you wanted an organ, you could just slip in and grab one? Furthermore, if a body has already been “opened”, it makes your task even easier… and you probably don’t know (or care) that the body might end up being a high-profile case that will soon hit the news, and then be scrutinised for decades to come.

Whilst we can never say now with certainty what did or didn’t happen, it seems at the very least plausible that organs could have been taken by an individual other than the killer, at some point after the discovery of the body and prior to the post-mortem.

The Virchow “method” isn’t really a specific technique for removing the heart in particular, but it refers more generally to the principle of removing organs one-by-one for individual examination. My preference for most cases is to remove all the organs together as a single “block”, and then place them onto a dissection bench for systematic examination. However, in certain cases (e.g. stabbings) I will adopt the one-organ-at-a-time (Virchow) approach, as this makes it easier to follow stab wound tracks through the body (whereas removing them all together distorts measurements and makes it easier to lose track).

Getting back to the reports you sent, where it says things like, “…the Pericardium was open below & the Heart absent…” this is what you might expect if the heart has been removed on its own (i.e. the “Virchow” method). For better access and to allow us to see the various vascular attachments, we tend to open the pericardium (fibrous sac enclosing the heart) using an inverted T-shape incision, so if the pericardium really was just “open below” then that implies that someone either didn’t know (or care) what they were doing, or didn’t have time to do it “properly”. So it goes against the person having anatomical skill/knowledge... but only very slightly

I think the possibility of organs being removed before the post-mortem by someone other than the killer has to be considered at least plausible. The Virchow method is nothing terribly specific, but just refers to things being removed one item at a time, rather than all stuck together as a big lump. This in itself doesn’t necessarily imply prior knowledge and experience, and once the body is open (the skin is the toughest bit to get through) whipping bits out is relatively straightforward.

I hope that helps in some way?

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Fernglas]

Sequoia is saying that the killer wasn't looking for any particular organ, which means that it isn't a question of finding the kidney, or any other organ. And he didn't say amateur, he said no great anatomical skill.

Hi Lewis!
Pardon me for being this crass, but Sequeira gave off simple BS! No great anatomical skill is nothing but amateur with other words. But I had to laugh when I read again that the Ripper "did not search for any particular organ"! An amateur simply looking for an organ to take as a trophy would probably have taken the liver, because even people without much anatomical skill will find it. But that was not the case!
Beside the brain, heart or the upper lung lobes, which are a different kind of beast to get to without special tools or stripping clear most of the torso, the kidney was about the most difficult organ to take, especially under time pressure.
Most people would not even find the kidney with the body already opened up on an examination table! The Rpper took out a kidney in darkness, on his knees under heavy time pressure, without making a mess of it, going in the difficult front way, instead of turning Kati around and going in from the back. He also made surgeon typical moves, which were very rare knowledge in 1888, like circumventing the navel and fixing part of the intestines in the rectum.
There is no chance in hell the Mitre Square murder was commited by an amateur or someone with some sketchy knowledge/skill base! It is simply impossible! Among those who could have done this the experienced butchers are already a big stretch and on the outer limits of probability. This is the work of someone with solid medical and surgical knowledge.

Please understand that I am not sucking this out of my fingers. This are logical conclusions from the reports and the humble bit of medical knowledge I have. It is glaringly obvious to anyone with some modicum of medical knowledge that the Ripper had considerable medical and surgical knowledge himself and I have no idea what Sequeira and Bond thought when they said the Ripper was some random guy. I doubt they were idiots, I can only theorise that "Rookie Detective" is right and they wanted the reputation of the doctors staying squeaky clean. So they underplayed the Ripper's actual skill level and talked in spongy words about hiim.

[Doctored Whatsit]

Hi Lewis!
Pardon me for being this crass, but Sequeira gave off simple BS! No great anatomical skill is nothing but amateur with other words. But I had to laugh when I read again that the Ripper "did not search for any particular organ"! An amateur simply looking for an organ to take as a trophy would probably have taken the liver, because even people without much anatomical skill will find it. But that was not the case!
Beside the brain, heart or the upper lung lobes, which are a different kind of beast to get to without special tools or stripping clear most of the torso, the kidney was about the most difficult organ to take, especially under time pressure.
Most people would not even find the kidney with the body already opened up on an examination table! The Rpper took out a kidney in darkness, on his knees under heavy time pressure, without making a mess of it, going in the difficult front way, instead of turning Kati around and going in from the back. He also made surgeon typical moves, which were very rare knowledge in 1888, like circumventing the navel and fixing part of the intestines in the rectum.
There is no chance in hell the Mitre Square murder was commited by an amateur or someone with some sketchy knowledge/skill base! It is simply impossible! Among those who could have done this the experienced butchers are already a big stretch and on the outer limits of probability. This is the work of someone with solid medical and surgical knowledge.

Please understand that I am not sucking this out of my fingers. This are logical conclusions from the reports and the humble bit of medical knowledge I have. It is glaringly obvious to anyone with some modicum of medical knowledge that the Ripper had considerable medical and surgical knowledge himself and I have no idea what Sequeira and Bond thought when they said the Ripper was some random guy. I doubt they were idiots, I can only theorise that "Rookie Detective" is right and they wanted the reputation of the doctors staying squeaky clean. So they underplayed the Ripper's actual skill level and talked in spongy words about hiim.

You are ignoring what Virchow said himself (see #40 from Kattrup). Slaughterers had been doing for a long time, what surgeons were just learning.

[Fernglas]

You are ignoring what Virchow said himself (see #40 from Kattrup). Slaughterers had been doing for a long time, what surgeons were just learning.

Hi!
I am not ignoring this! I stated that an experienced butcher is a possibility, if a faint one due to the Ripper doing surgical automatisms, like circumvention of the navel, nothing butchers/slaugtherers would normally do. Still it is a small possibility.

But what you seem to dismiss is that Sequeira and Bond stated that the Ripper had no special skill and knowledges, any random guy could copy him. That is blatantly false.

[Doctored Whatsit]

I am inclined to dismiss the views of both Sequeira and Bond as being far less relevant than those of the much more senior men, Phillips and Brown.

Why do you assume that a butcher/slaughterer would not circumvent the navel? It seems to be a totally logical thing to do.

Thank you for admitting that a butcher/slaughterer as JtR is a "faint possibility", when the modus opperandi of the killing conforms to what a slaughterer would do several times a day, and which is hardly taught in medical school, the much quoted Virchow makes it clear that surgery was only catching up with what slaughterers had been doing for a long time, and that the knives they used were more appropriate for the job than anything surgeons had been using.

I think Virchow himself is making a good case for JtR being a slaughterer!