Chapman’s death.

[Fisherman]

Mrs Long, at the Inquest.....worth noting that Mrs Long did not immediately come forward, even with all the newspapers and gossip about the murder "...


"I saw the woman's face. Have seen the deceased in the mortuary, and I am sure the woman that I saw in Hanbury-street was the deceased. I did not see the man's face, but I noticed that he was dark. He was wearing a brown low-crowned felt hat. I think he had on a dark coat, though I am not certain. By the look of him he seemed to me a man over forty years of age. He appeared to me to be a little taller than the deceased.
Did he look like a working man, or what? - He looked like a foreigner.
Did he look like a dock labourer, or a workman, or what? - I should say he looked like what I should call shabby-genteel.
Were they talking loudly? - They were talking pretty loudly. I overheard him say to her "Will you?" and she replied, "Yes." That is all I heard, and I heard this as I passed. I left them standing there, and I did not look back, so I cannot say where they went to.
Did they appear to be sober? - I saw nothing to indicate that either of them was the worse for drink.
Was it not an unusual thing to see a man and a woman standing there talking? - Oh no. I see lots of them standing there in the morning.
At that hour of the day? - Yes; that is why I did not take much notice of them."

She initially said that she would not be able to identify the couple, though. That terminally undermined whatever she said afterwards, I´m afraid. That´s how it works.

[PaulB]

Next up is Paul B, who writes (in a post to Trevor Marriott):

"However, you have acknowledged that Phillips’ estimated time of death was a guess and could have been wrong, so we have two possible times of death; which of them best fits with the context of known facts?" (post 1100)

This calls for an explanation what the term "guess" points to: A random guess with no backing substantiation, or an INFORMED supposition, based on the examnination Phillips made?

There is nothing about the kindergarten in my statement. No explanation of what 'guess' means is needed or implied. Whether a guess is informed or not is an indication of likely reliability, an informed guess being preferred to an uniformed one, but informed or otherwise, it could still have been wrong. What I wrote actually accepted that the guess was valid, I also accepted the time of death suggested by the witness statements was valid, and that is clear from the statement 'so we have two possible times of death'. I asked Trevor which time of death best fitted the context of known facts. He, unsurprisingly, didn't answer. I do suggest that you try to understand what is written before hurrying to assign them to the kindergarten.

[PaulB]

She initially said that she would not be able to identify the couple, though. That terminally undermined whatever she said afterwards, I´m afraid. That´s how it works.

Really? Since when did we start living in a world where one couldn't change one's mind?

[The Baron]

Dear me. Turn your back on the boards and it will turn into kindergarten while you are away.

I look the thread up, and what do I see? Well, I see Herlock Sholmes, the self-proclaimed promotor of science, claiming that "Fish’s TOD arguments have been thoroughly trashed with evidence." I suppose the evidence alluded to is the reoccurring assurances that palpating byt hand is not reliable in comparison with using a thermometer.

The thing is, I have never claimed otherwise. Thermometers ARE more reliable - but that does n ot make palpating by hand unreliable as such. It only makes it less exact. There can be no hand palpation telling us temperatures in decimals like a thermometer will do.

But that was never the issue here, was it? No, the issue was always - and is still - that much as the method is less reliabale than a thermomneter, it is NOT so unrleiable so as to make a medico miss out on numerous degrees, and so Phillips is not likely to have been totally wrong in his estimation. Sure, he can have been some way off, but he could not have been as off as it takes for us to be able to dismsiss him, the way Herlock would like to do. As we van see from quotations from his posts, he hads alread taken the liberty to do so:

"Phillips can be dismissed. He wasn’t a magician. He didn’t have magic hands. He could not have accurately estimate Chapman’s TOD." (post 1104)

and

"Phillips is finished. Anyone that says otherwise is simply allowing bias to lead them into embarrassing positions." (post 1105)

To prove this, it will NOT take more examples of articles pointing out that palpating by hand is unreliable. It will instead take articles telling us that it is so unreliable as to make it more likely than not that Phillips got the temperature of Chapmans body many degrees wrong when feeling her for warmth? Has any such material been presented yet? I don´t think so.

Next up is Paul B, who writes (in a post to Trevor Marriott):

"However, you have acknowledged that Phillips’ estimated time of death was a guess and could have been wrong, so we have two possible times of death; which of them best fits with the context of known facts?" (post 1100)

This calls for an explanation what the term "guess" points to: A random guess with no backing substantiation, or an INFORMED supposition, based on the examnination Phillips made?

To take us one step further, I woud like for all of us to read and digest a paper called "Detection of skin temperature differences using palpation by manual physical therapists and lay individuals".

Interestingly, this is a paper concerning itself with the EXACT information we have all been making assumptions about for quite some time now. It takes a look at how 44 lay persons and 44 manual physical therapists tested just how exact they were in terms of being able to tell temperatures from each other, by feeling simulated skin for warmth. We can learn whether the method is worthless (as we are told by Herlock Sholmes) or useful to a significant degree (which is that I am saying).

Since we have a poster who asks for highly scientific material, it makes me happy to present the authors, complete with their credentials:


David Levine, J. Randy Walker, Denis J. Marcellin-Little, Ron Goulet, and Hongyu Ru

David F. Levine (born July 13, 1965) is an American author, a professor of physical therapy, and a biomedical scientist. He holds the Walter M. Cline Chair of Excellence in Physical Therapy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.His research and publication contributions focus on veterinary rehabilitation and physical therapy, including canine physical therapy, animal assisted therapy, gait analysis and motion analysis, the use of modalities such as electrical stimulation and therapeutic ultrasound, as well as clinical infectious disease research.

J. Randy Walker, PT, PhD

Professor Emeritus

Physical Therapy

Dr. Denis Marcellin-Little
Associate Professor, Orthopedics

Department of Clinical Sciences

College of Veterinary Medicine

North Carolina State University

Dr. Marcellin completed his doctor of veterinary medicine training in Toulouse, France. He is a Diplomate of both the European and American College of Veterinary Surgeons. Dr. Marcellin is recognized as an authority in the field of veterinary orthopedics. His areas of interest include total hip replacement, external fixation, treatment of bone deformities and physical therapy. His current research interests include the biological response to orthopedic implants, distraction osteogenesis and canine developmental orthopedic diseases.

Dr. Ron Goulet is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He received a BSCE from Northwestern University in 1976. He worked in the Chicago area as a project engineer for a consulting firm and as an applications engineer for a manufacturer of ash handling systems then in Pittsburgh as manager of utility sales and marketing for a competitor serving the power industry. In 1986, Goulet earned Professional Registration in the state of Maine, started Consultech, a sole proprietorship, and delivered expert engineering consulting services to legal and insurance clients in matters involving injury, event reconstruction and property loss. He earned an Engineering PhD from the University of New Hampshire in 1997 defending a thesis in the field of experimental fracture mechanics. Goulet joined the CECS faculty in 1998, taught undergrad and graduate courses in engineering mechanics and materials science and directed the UTC Orthopedic Biomechanics Research Laboratory, a collaboration with the UT College of Medicine, Dept. of Orthopedic Surgery. Goulet’s research interests include improving the effectiveness of engineering education, experimental orthopedic biomechanics and applied experimental mechanics.

Hongyu Ru, PhD

Clinical Assistant Professor of Biostatistics


I trust this line-up shall meet the high demands of Herlock Sholmes, even.

I have cut out the most important bits, but anybody who wants can find the article on the net.

Here we go:

Objectives

To evaluate the accuracy of detection of temperature differences among skin sites of lay individuals and manual physical therapists.

Methods

Forty-four manual physical therapists and 44 lay individuals were recruited. Subjects palpated two temperature-controlled surfaces that ranged in temperature between 30 and 35 °C and varied randomly by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 °C for 10 s. The subjects were then asked to identify the warmer pad.

Results

Accuracy increased with larger temperature differences. Accuracy of detection of 1 and 3 °C temperature differences was higher in manual physical therapists than lay individuals.

Discussion

Palpation can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner.

+++

Now, that was from the summary, but here are the pertinent parts from the discussion:

Palpation is an integral part of the physical examination of soft tissues. Tissue changes, particularly inflammation, lead to changes in skin temperature [8–10]. The results of the current study indicate that manual physical therapists and laypersons can detect temperature differences as small as 1–2 °C, making palpation a valid tool when screening for pathology involving increased tissue temperature.

We accepted our hypothesis that the rate of accurate detection by manual physical therapists and by lay individuals increased when temperature differences between plates increased. Lay individuals accurately detected the warmer plate only two thirds of the time when differences were 1 or 2 °C, accurately detected the warmer plate approximately 90% of the time when the temperature difference was 4 °C, and >95% when the difference was 5 °C. Manual physical therapists accurately detected the warmer plate > three quarters of the time when differences were 1 or 2 °C and detected differences of ≥3 °C with an accuracy >95%. We accepted our hypothesis that manual physical therapists were more accurate than lay individuals for smaller gradients (1 and 3°). These differences disappeared with larger gradients, as the accuracy of lay individuals approached 100%. The source of the increased accuracy observed in manual physical therapists compared to lay individuals is not known. Increased accuracy could result from differences in palpation technique or in the cognitive processing of perceived temperatures differences. Palpation technique likely influences thermal perception. Thermal perception differs based on the area of contact and on contact mechanics.

We concluded that palpation can accurately detect temperature differences between skin sites. Accuracy increases with larger temperature differences. Manual physical therapists are more accurate than lay individuals.

So, palpation is a very useful and not very unexact method of determining body warmth. Physical therapists were able to tell differences of 1 or 2 degrees in 75 per cent of the cases, and when the difference was more than 3 degrees, they were able to tell in 95 per cent of the cases. Lay persons were less skilled, but I think we may rule out that Phillips was in any way a lay person.
He was instead an extremely skilled medico with heaps of experience. And he knew in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street that he was dealing with a case where it was of the utmost importance that he got it right - there cannot have been any sloppy work.

One more thin that has dawned on me while being away for some little time is how every medico who was called out to palpate for body warmth actually brought along a test kit so he would not get things wrong: himself. If Phillips had any doubt about how a living person would feel, all he had to do would be to feel his own skin!

Going on the above, I would say that far from dismissing Phillips, we should dismiss once and for all the nutty idea that palpating for warmth was always going to get things very wrong. Apparently, the possibility that Phillips would have gotten the temperature three degrees wrong or more is less than 5 per cent. And since the temperature falls by 0,8 degrees Celsius per hour and not at all during the first half to one hour, it would not have fallen at all or very little in Chapmans body if she had only been dead for a mere hour. And guess what: Phillips would not have missed out on that, as per the above.

I believe this is the first truly relevant paper presented to date on this thread. It should make Herlock very happy, since he has lamented over how I have had a view without being a medically versed man, whereas his own misinterpretations of heaps of experts have been passed off as fact.

So let´s sign off by repeating this phrase: Palpation can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner.

... and, of course, by wawing goodbye to the witnesses. Adieu, Mrs Long, you never saw Annie Chapman, and farewell, Albert Cadosch, you never heard her.

I may or may not answer the oncoming protests by Herlock et al "But my experts cannot be refuted, Phillips must be thrown to the wolves. Please, PLEASE!" I actually have other things to do, and I am in the process of looking at more material, so throwing horse manure is not at the top off my bucket list right now.

Nor do I need to - I just proved that palpation for temperature is normally fairly exact.

What a great post Sir!

And we have been told to SAFLEY discard Dr. Phillips' TOD ..


Hat off to you Mr. Swedish Jounalist!



The Baron

[John G]

Packer...obviously false, Schwartz..not important enough to include at the hearing, Maxwell...warned at the Inquest her evidence is contrary to all other evidence including the autopsy, Hutchinson.... discredited days after giving his statement, Lawende...said he couldn't identify the man, even after seeing his face, within 2 weeks from the statement, I wont bother with Mizen...my point being that the witnesses you mention have no bearing on the respective cases. Cadosche and Richardson do, and they were not discredited, they were included at the Inquests and they, among all the witnesses mentioned were closer to the actual murder site at the time of the murder is committed than anyone else.

I think Richardson was a reliable witness, if only because I don't think he would have placed himself st the scene of the crime with a knife in his hand if he wasn't!

That leaves Cadosch and Long, who gave contradictory timings. My preference is for Long, because her evidence seems much more consistent to me with JtR's MO.

[Kattrup]

Dear me. Turn your back on the boards and it will turn into kindergarten while you are away.

I look the thread up, and what do I see? Well, I see Herlock Sholmes, the self-proclaimed promotor of science, claiming that "Fish’s TOD arguments have been thoroughly trashed with evidence." I suppose the evidence alluded to is the reoccurring assurances that palpating byt hand is not reliable in comparison with using a thermometer.

The thing is, I have never claimed otherwise. Thermometers ARE more reliable - but that does n ot make palpating by hand unreliable as such. It only makes it less exact. There can be no hand palpation telling us temperatures in decimals like a thermometer will do.

But that was never the issue here, was it? No, the issue was always - and is still - that much as the method is less reliabale than a thermomneter, it is NOT so unrleiable so as to make a medico miss out on numerous degrees, and so Phillips is not likely to have been totally wrong in his estimation. Sure, he can have been some way off, but he could not have been as off as it takes for us to be able to dismsiss him, the way Herlock would like to do. As we van see from quotations from his posts, he hads alread taken the liberty to do so:

"Phillips can be dismissed. He wasn’t a magician. He didn’t have magic hands. He could not have accurately estimate Chapman’s TOD." (post 1104)

and

"Phillips is finished. Anyone that says otherwise is simply allowing bias to lead them into embarrassing positions." (post 1105)

To prove this, it will NOT take more examples of articles pointing out that palpating by hand is unreliable. It will instead take articles telling us that it is so unreliable as to make it more likely than not that Phillips got the temperature of Chapmans body many degrees wrong when feeling her for warmth? Has any such material been presented yet? I don´t think so.

Next up is Paul B, who writes (in a post to Trevor Marriott):

"However, you have acknowledged that Phillips’ estimated time of death was a guess and could have been wrong, so we have two possible times of death; which of them best fits with the context of known facts?" (post 1100)

This calls for an explanation what the term "guess" points to: A random guess with no backing substantiation, or an INFORMED supposition, based on the examnination Phillips made?

To take us one step further, I woud like for all of us to read and digest a paper called "Detection of skin temperature differences using palpation by manual physical therapists and lay individuals".

Interestingly, this is a paper concerning itself with the EXACT information we have all been making assumptions about for quite some time now. It takes a look at how 44 lay persons and 44 manual physical therapists tested just how exact they were in terms of being able to tell temperatures from each other, by feeling simulated skin for warmth. We can learn whether the method is worthless (as we are told by Herlock Sholmes) or useful to a significant degree (which is that I am saying).

Since we have a poster who asks for highly scientific material, it makes me happy to present the authors, complete with their credentials:


David Levine, J. Randy Walker, Denis J. Marcellin-Little, Ron Goulet, and Hongyu Ru

David F. Levine (born July 13, 1965) is an American author, a professor of physical therapy, and a biomedical scientist. He holds the Walter M. Cline Chair of Excellence in Physical Therapy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.His research and publication contributions focus on veterinary rehabilitation and physical therapy, including canine physical therapy, animal assisted therapy, gait analysis and motion analysis, the use of modalities such as electrical stimulation and therapeutic ultrasound, as well as clinical infectious disease research.

J. Randy Walker, PT, PhD

Professor Emeritus

Physical Therapy

Dr. Denis Marcellin-Little
Associate Professor, Orthopedics

Department of Clinical Sciences

College of Veterinary Medicine

North Carolina State University

Dr. Marcellin completed his doctor of veterinary medicine training in Toulouse, France. He is a Diplomate of both the European and American College of Veterinary Surgeons. Dr. Marcellin is recognized as an authority in the field of veterinary orthopedics. His areas of interest include total hip replacement, external fixation, treatment of bone deformities and physical therapy. His current research interests include the biological response to orthopedic implants, distraction osteogenesis and canine developmental orthopedic diseases.

Dr. Ron Goulet is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He received a BSCE from Northwestern University in 1976. He worked in the Chicago area as a project engineer for a consulting firm and as an applications engineer for a manufacturer of ash handling systems then in Pittsburgh as manager of utility sales and marketing for a competitor serving the power industry. In 1986, Goulet earned Professional Registration in the state of Maine, started Consultech, a sole proprietorship, and delivered expert engineering consulting services to legal and insurance clients in matters involving injury, event reconstruction and property loss. He earned an Engineering PhD from the University of New Hampshire in 1997 defending a thesis in the field of experimental fracture mechanics. Goulet joined the CECS faculty in 1998, taught undergrad and graduate courses in engineering mechanics and materials science and directed the UTC Orthopedic Biomechanics Research Laboratory, a collaboration with the UT College of Medicine, Dept. of Orthopedic Surgery. Goulet’s research interests include improving the effectiveness of engineering education, experimental orthopedic biomechanics and applied experimental mechanics.

Hongyu Ru, PhD

Clinical Assistant Professor of Biostatistics


I trust this line-up shall meet the high demands of Herlock Sholmes, even.

I have cut out the most important bits, but anybody who wants can find the article on the net.

Here we go:

Objectives

To evaluate the accuracy of detection of temperature differences among skin sites of lay individuals and manual physical therapists.

Methods

Forty-four manual physical therapists and 44 lay individuals were recruited. Subjects palpated two temperature-controlled surfaces that ranged in temperature between 30 and 35 °C and varied randomly by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 °C for 10 s. The subjects were then asked to identify the warmer pad.

Results

Accuracy increased with larger temperature differences. Accuracy of detection of 1 and 3 °C temperature differences was higher in manual physical therapists than lay individuals.

Discussion

Palpation can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner.

+++

Now, that was from the summary, but here are the pertinent parts from the discussion:

Palpation is an integral part of the physical examination of soft tissues. Tissue changes, particularly inflammation, lead to changes in skin temperature [8–10]. The results of the current study indicate that manual physical therapists and laypersons can detect temperature differences as small as 1–2 °C, making palpation a valid tool when screening for pathology involving increased tissue temperature.

We accepted our hypothesis that the rate of accurate detection by manual physical therapists and by lay individuals increased when temperature differences between plates increased. Lay individuals accurately detected the warmer plate only two thirds of the time when differences were 1 or 2 °C, accurately detected the warmer plate approximately 90% of the time when the temperature difference was 4 °C, and >95% when the difference was 5 °C. Manual physical therapists accurately detected the warmer plate > three quarters of the time when differences were 1 or 2 °C and detected differences of ≥3 °C with an accuracy >95%. We accepted our hypothesis that manual physical therapists were more accurate than lay individuals for smaller gradients (1 and 3°). These differences disappeared with larger gradients, as the accuracy of lay individuals approached 100%. The source of the increased accuracy observed in manual physical therapists compared to lay individuals is not known. Increased accuracy could result from differences in palpation technique or in the cognitive processing of perceived temperatures differences. Palpation technique likely influences thermal perception. Thermal perception differs based on the area of contact and on contact mechanics.

We concluded that palpation can accurately detect temperature differences between skin sites. Accuracy increases with larger temperature differences. Manual physical therapists are more accurate than lay individuals.

So, palpation is a very useful and not very unexact method of determining body warmth. Physical therapists were able to tell differences of 1 or 2 degrees in 75 per cent of the cases, and when the difference was more than 3 degrees, they were able to tell in 95 per cent of the cases. Lay persons were less skilled, but I think we may rule out that Phillips was in any way a lay person.
He was instead an extremely skilled medico with heaps of experience. And he knew in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street that he was dealing with a case where it was of the utmost importance that he got it right - there cannot have been any sloppy work.

One more thin that has dawned on me while being away for some little time is how every medico who was called out to palpate for body warmth actually brought along a test kit so he would not get things wrong: himself. If Phillips had any doubt about how a living person would feel, all he had to do would be to feel his own skin!

Going on the above, I would say that far from dismissing Phillips, we should dismiss once and for all the nutty idea that palpating for warmth was always going to get things very wrong. Apparently, the possibility that Phillips would have gotten the temperature three degrees wrong or more is less than 5 per cent. And since the temperature falls by 0,8 degrees Celsius per hour and not at all during the first half to one hour, it would not have fallen at all or very little in Chapmans body if she had only been dead for a mere hour. And guess what: Phillips would not have missed out on that, as per the above.

I believe this is the first truly relevant paper presented to date on this thread. It should make Herlock very happy, since he has lamented over how I have had a view without being a medically versed man, whereas his own misinterpretations of heaps of experts have been passed off as fact.

So let´s sign off by repeating this phrase: Palpation can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner.

... and, of course, by wawing goodbye to the witnesses. Adieu, Mrs Long, you never saw Annie Chapman, and farewell, Albert Cadosch, you never heard her.

I may or may not answer the oncoming protests by Herlock et al "But my experts cannot be refuted, Phillips must be thrown to the wolves. Please, PLEASE!" I actually have other things to do, and I am in the process of looking at more material, so throwing horse manure is not at the top off my bucket list right now.

Nor do I need to - I just proved that palpation for temperature is normally fairly exact.

Hi Fisherman

You've misinterpreted the paper's conclusions as to what Philips would have been able to detect. Perhaps you should reread it and amend what you've proudly "proved".

Also, you are using the article to compare a senior Victorian physician with 21st century manual physical therapists. Would their workdays be very similar, do you think?

[John G]

I just want to refer back to previous points I've made concerning ToD issues. Most of the studies in this area involve healthy subjects so are no relevant to Chapman's case. This is because Chapman most definitely was not healthy. She was, according to Dr Phillips autopsy, 'showing signs of great deprivation." And was "far advanced in disease of the lungs and membranes of the brain."

It's fair to conclude, therefore, that Chapman was emaciated, and was possibly suffering from tuberculosis, a muscle wasting condition, which invariably would have progressed to gastric tuberculosis, in the pre- treatment age, further exasperating body weight issues.

And this matters. For instance, individuals who are unusually thin would be expected to have a much lower body temperature than the average person, which is why corrections for body weight is an important corrective factor in the Hennssge method.

And, as I've noted before, individuals who are unusually thin can feel cold to the touch even when alive because their body has no means of retaining the heat it creates: https://www.buoyhealth.com/symptoms-a-z/cold-skin/

[Herlock Sholmes]

Dear me. Turn your back on the boards and it will turn into kindergarten while you are away.

I look the thread up, and what do I see? Well, I see Herlock Sholmes, the self-proclaimed promotor of science, claiming that "Fish’s TOD arguments have been thoroughly trashed with evidence." I suppose the evidence alluded to is the reoccurring assurances that palpating byt hand is not reliable in comparison with using a thermometer.

The thing is, I have never claimed otherwise. Thermometers ARE more reliable - but that does n ot make palpating by hand unreliable as such. It only makes it less exact. There can be no hand palpation telling us temperatures in decimals like a thermometer will do.

But that was never the issue here, was it? No, the issue was always - and is still - that much as the method is less reliabale than a thermomneter, it is NOT so unrleiable so as to make a medico miss out on numerous degrees, and so Phillips is not likely to have been totally wrong in his estimation. Sure, he can have been some way off, but he could not have been as off as it takes for us to be able to dismsiss him, the way Herlock would like to do. As we van see from quotations from his posts, he hads alread taken the liberty to do so:

"Phillips can be dismissed. He wasn’t a magician. He didn’t have magic hands. He could not have accurately estimate Chapman’s TOD." (post 1104)

and

"Phillips is finished. Anyone that says otherwise is simply allowing bias to lead them into embarrassing positions." (post 1105)

To prove this, it will NOT take more examples of articles pointing out that palpating by hand is unreliable. It will instead take articles telling us that it is so unreliable as to make it more likely than not that Phillips got the temperature of Chapmans body many degrees wrong when feeling her for warmth? Has any such material been presented yet? I don´t think so.

Next up is Paul B, who writes (in a post to Trevor Marriott):

"However, you have acknowledged that Phillips’ estimated time of death was a guess and could have been wrong, so we have two possible times of death; which of them best fits with the context of known facts?" (post 1100)

This calls for an explanation what the term "guess" points to: A random guess with no backing substantiation, or an INFORMED supposition, based on the examnination Phillips made?

To take us one step further, I woud like for all of us to read and digest a paper called "Detection of skin temperature differences using palpation by manual physical therapists and lay individuals".

Interestingly, this is a paper concerning itself with the EXACT information we have all been making assumptions about for quite some time now. It takes a look at how 44 lay persons and 44 manual physical therapists tested just how exact they were in terms of being able to tell temperatures from each other, by feeling simulated skin for warmth. We can learn whether the method is worthless (as we are told by Herlock Sholmes) or useful to a significant degree (which is that I am saying).

Since we have a poster who asks for highly scientific material, it makes me happy to present the authors, complete with their credentials:


David Levine, J. Randy Walker, Denis J. Marcellin-Little, Ron Goulet, and Hongyu Ru

David F. Levine (born July 13, 1965) is an American author, a professor of physical therapy, and a biomedical scientist. He holds the Walter M. Cline Chair of Excellence in Physical Therapy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.His research and publication contributions focus on veterinary rehabilitation and physical therapy, including canine physical therapy, animal assisted therapy, gait analysis and motion analysis, the use of modalities such as electrical stimulation and therapeutic ultrasound, as well as clinical infectious disease research.

J. Randy Walker, PT, PhD

Professor Emeritus

Physical Therapy

Dr. Denis Marcellin-Little
Associate Professor, Orthopedics

Department of Clinical Sciences

College of Veterinary Medicine

North Carolina State University

Dr. Marcellin completed his doctor of veterinary medicine training in Toulouse, France. He is a Diplomate of both the European and American College of Veterinary Surgeons. Dr. Marcellin is recognized as an authority in the field of veterinary orthopedics. His areas of interest include total hip replacement, external fixation, treatment of bone deformities and physical therapy. His current research interests include the biological response to orthopedic implants, distraction osteogenesis and canine developmental orthopedic diseases.

Dr. Ron Goulet is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He received a BSCE from Northwestern University in 1976. He worked in the Chicago area as a project engineer for a consulting firm and as an applications engineer for a manufacturer of ash handling systems then in Pittsburgh as manager of utility sales and marketing for a competitor serving the power industry. In 1986, Goulet earned Professional Registration in the state of Maine, started Consultech, a sole proprietorship, and delivered expert engineering consulting services to legal and insurance clients in matters involving injury, event reconstruction and property loss. He earned an Engineering PhD from the University of New Hampshire in 1997 defending a thesis in the field of experimental fracture mechanics. Goulet joined the CECS faculty in 1998, taught undergrad and graduate courses in engineering mechanics and materials science and directed the UTC Orthopedic Biomechanics Research Laboratory, a collaboration with the UT College of Medicine, Dept. of Orthopedic Surgery. Goulet’s research interests include improving the effectiveness of engineering education, experimental orthopedic biomechanics and applied experimental mechanics.

Hongyu Ru, PhD

Clinical Assistant Professor of Biostatistics


I trust this line-up shall meet the high demands of Herlock Sholmes, even.

I have cut out the most important bits, but anybody who wants can find the article on the net.

Here we go:

Objectives

To evaluate the accuracy of detection of temperature differences among skin sites of lay individuals and manual physical therapists.

Methods

Forty-four manual physical therapists and 44 lay individuals were recruited. Subjects palpated two temperature-controlled surfaces that ranged in temperature between 30 and 35 °C and varied randomly by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 °C for 10 s. The subjects were then asked to identify the warmer pad.

Results

Accuracy increased with larger temperature differences. Accuracy of detection of 1 and 3 °C temperature differences was higher in manual physical therapists than lay individuals.

Discussion

Palpation can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner.

+++

Now, that was from the summary, but here are the pertinent parts from the discussion:

Palpation is an integral part of the physical examination of soft tissues. Tissue changes, particularly inflammation, lead to changes in skin temperature [8–10]. The results of the current study indicate that manual physical therapists and laypersons can detect temperature differences as small as 1–2 °C, making palpation a valid tool when screening for pathology involving increased tissue temperature.

We accepted our hypothesis that the rate of accurate detection by manual physical therapists and by lay individuals increased when temperature differences between plates increased. Lay individuals accurately detected the warmer plate only two thirds of the time when differences were 1 or 2 °C, accurately detected the warmer plate approximately 90% of the time when the temperature difference was 4 °C, and >95% when the difference was 5 °C. Manual physical therapists accurately detected the warmer plate > three quarters of the time when differences were 1 or 2 °C and detected differences of ≥3 °C with an accuracy >95%. We accepted our hypothesis that manual physical therapists were more accurate than lay individuals for smaller gradients (1 and 3°). These differences disappeared with larger gradients, as the accuracy of lay individuals approached 100%. The source of the increased accuracy observed in manual physical therapists compared to lay individuals is not known. Increased accuracy could result from differences in palpation technique or in the cognitive processing of perceived temperatures differences. Palpation technique likely influences thermal perception. Thermal perception differs based on the area of contact and on contact mechanics.

We concluded that palpation can accurately detect temperature differences between skin sites. Accuracy increases with larger temperature differences. Manual physical therapists are more accurate than lay individuals.

So, palpation is a very useful and not very unexact method of determining body warmth. Physical therapists were able to tell differences of 1 or 2 degrees in 75 per cent of the cases, and when the difference was more than 3 degrees, they were able to tell in 95 per cent of the cases. Lay persons were less skilled, but I think we may rule out that Phillips was in any way a lay person.
He was instead an extremely skilled medico with heaps of experience. And he knew in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street that he was dealing with a case where it was of the utmost importance that he got it right - there cannot have been any sloppy work.

One more thin that has dawned on me while being away for some little time is how every medico who was called out to palpate for body warmth actually brought along a test kit so he would not get things wrong: himself. If Phillips had any doubt about how a living person would feel, all he had to do would be to feel his own skin!

Going on the above, I would say that far from dismissing Phillips, we should dismiss once and for all the nutty idea that palpating for warmth was always going to get things very wrong. Apparently, the possibility that Phillips would have gotten the temperature three degrees wrong or more is less than 5 per cent. And since the temperature falls by 0,8 degrees Celsius per hour and not at all during the first half to one hour, it would not have fallen at all or very little in Chapmans body if she had only been dead for a mere hour. And guess what: Phillips would not have missed out on that, as per the above.

I believe this is the first truly relevant paper presented to date on this thread. It should make Herlock very happy, since he has lamented over how I have had a view without being a medically versed man, whereas his own misinterpretations of heaps of experts have been passed off as fact.

So let´s sign off by repeating this phrase: Palpation can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner.

... and, of course, by wawing goodbye to the witnesses. Adieu, Mrs Long, you never saw Annie Chapman, and farewell, Albert Cadosch, you never heard her.

I may or may not answer the oncoming protests by Herlock et al "But my experts cannot be refuted, Phillips must be thrown to the wolves. Please, PLEASE!" I actually have other things to do, and I am in the process of looking at more material, so throwing horse manure is not at the top off my bucket list right now.

Nor do I need to - I just proved that palpation for temperature is normally fairly exact.

Fisherman, you throw out comments like:"that does not make palpating by hand unreliable as such" and "we should dismiss once and for all the nutty idea that palpating for warmth was always going to get things very wrong" as if we've all been discussing palpating by hand throughout the entire thread. This is the first time you've mentioned it in this thread.

Palpation is a technique used on living people. As the paper you have cited makes clear, "Healthcare professionals use palpation for assessing various conditions" and that, in part, it can be used "to detect temperature changes resulting from inflammation associated with muscularskeletal disorders".

It has absolutely no application to assessing body temperature on a dead body to assess time of death. The point isn't even mentioned in the paper.

Furthermore, the paper is concerned with whether experienced medics can better assess surface body temperature of living patients than laypeople. It does not even begin to consider, and thus does not negate, the point made by Taylor (as reported by Burman) over 150 years ago that an objectively warm dead body can FEEL subjectively cold to a warm human hand. Nowhere in the paper is it stated that a medic can overcome this problem which affects all human biology.

The argument against you has never been that Dr Phillips wasn't in a better position than a lay person to assess the body temperature of a corpse. The argument is that it's not always physically possible for any human to assess whether a dead body is objectively "cold" or "warm" and THEN, regardless of whether that assessment is accurate or inaccurate, it's not possible to go on to reliably estimate a time of death from that information.

So Fisherman when you say, "this is a paper concerning itself with the EXACT information we have all been making assumptions about for quite some time now" all that means is that you have misunderstood the paper. It is, in fact, totally and utterly irrelevant to what we have been discussing in this thread. I note that your ludicrous conclusion from the paper is that "palpation for temperature is normally fairly exact." Nowhere does it say this in the paper! What it says is that a medic can accurately detect temperature differences BETWEEN SKIN SITES. In other words, they can accurately detect that one part of a living body is warmer or colder than another. That's it!

As it happens, while you've been away, I've posted the definitive answer to this entire question from Dr Payne-James. He actually understands that medics are probably better than laypeople in assessing body temperature but he STILL says that the technique used by Dr Phillips in 1888 and, bizarrely, advocated by you in 2019, was and remains "useless." I only partially quoted him previously, but here is the full quote:

“Many pathologists have in the past used various 'rules of thumb' to calculate time of death from the body temperature but these are generally so unreliable that they should not now be used. Sometimes the perceived warmth of the body to touch is mentioned in court as an indicator of time of death; this assessment is so unreliable as to be useless and is even more so if the pathologist is asked to comment upon the reported perceptions of another person.".

Source: 'Simpson's Forensic Medicine' (13th edition), lead author Jason Payne-James.




So you can see that he factored in a layperson's assessment of body temperature (as worse than useless) but a medic's assessment is just USELESS.


Another pathetic attempt at bolstering Dr Phillips just to maintain the validity of your own suspect. I’d stick to fishing if I were you.

Look at the posters that support your points - Fishy, Baron......need I say more.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Fisherman

You've misinterpreted the paper's conclusions as to what Philips would have been able to detect. Perhaps you should reread it and amend what you've proudly "proved".

Also, you are using the article to compare a senior Victorian physician with 21st century manual physical therapists. Would their workdays be very similar, do you think?

Exactly Kattrup

[Herlock Sholmes]

What a great post Sir!

And we have been told to SAFLEY discard Dr. Phillips' TOD ..


Hat off to you Mr. Swedish Jounalist!



The Baron

I’d learn to wait for the responses before you begin to celebrate Baron.

Point dismissed!

[Herlock Sholmes]

https://ibb.co/qF6RN1K

For Fish

[etenguy]

https://ibb.co/qF6RN1K

For Fish

I struggle to understand why this argument persists. We have absolute clarity from the highest authority in the land that temperature based estimates of time of death are so unreliable that they are not to be used in criminal investigations.

[JeffHamm]

Dear me. Turn your back on the boards and it will turn into kindergarten while you are away.

I look the thread up, and what do I see? Well, I see Herlock Sholmes, the self-proclaimed promotor of science, claiming that "Fish’s TOD arguments have been thoroughly trashed with evidence." I suppose the evidence alluded to is the reoccurring assurances that palpating byt hand is not reliable in comparison with using a thermometer.

The thing is, I have never claimed otherwise. Thermometers ARE more reliable - but that does n ot make palpating by hand unreliable as such. It only makes it less exact. There can be no hand palpation telling us temperatures in decimals like a thermometer will do.

But that was never the issue here, was it? No, the issue was always - and is still - that much as the method is less reliabale than a thermomneter, it is NOT so unrleiable so as to make a medico miss out on numerous degrees, and so Phillips is not likely to have been totally wrong in his estimation. Sure, he can have been some way off, but he could not have been as off as it takes for us to be able to dismsiss him, the way Herlock would like to do. As we van see from quotations from his posts, he hads alread taken the liberty to do so:

"Phillips can be dismissed. He wasn’t a magician. He didn’t have magic hands. He could not have accurately estimate Chapman’s TOD." (post 1104)

and

"Phillips is finished. Anyone that says otherwise is simply allowing bias to lead them into embarrassing positions." (post 1105)

To prove this, it will NOT take more examples of articles pointing out that palpating by hand is unreliable. It will instead take articles telling us that it is so unreliable as to make it more likely than not that Phillips got the temperature of Chapmans body many degrees wrong when feeling her for warmth? Has any such material been presented yet? I don´t think so.

Next up is Paul B, who writes (in a post to Trevor Marriott):

"However, you have acknowledged that Phillips’ estimated time of death was a guess and could have been wrong, so we have two possible times of death; which of them best fits with the context of known facts?" (post 1100)

This calls for an explanation what the term "guess" points to: A random guess with no backing substantiation, or an INFORMED supposition, based on the examnination Phillips made?

To take us one step further, I woud like for all of us to read and digest a paper called "Detection of skin temperature differences using palpation by manual physical therapists and lay individuals".

Interestingly, this is a paper concerning itself with the EXACT information we have all been making assumptions about for quite some time now. It takes a look at how 44 lay persons and 44 manual physical therapists tested just how exact they were in terms of being able to tell temperatures from each other, by feeling simulated skin for warmth. We can learn whether the method is worthless (as we are told by Herlock Sholmes) or useful to a significant degree (which is that I am saying).

Since we have a poster who asks for highly scientific material, it makes me happy to present the authors, complete with their credentials:


David Levine, J. Randy Walker, Denis J. Marcellin-Little, Ron Goulet, and Hongyu Ru

David F. Levine (born July 13, 1965) is an American author, a professor of physical therapy, and a biomedical scientist. He holds the Walter M. Cline Chair of Excellence in Physical Therapy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.His research and publication contributions focus on veterinary rehabilitation and physical therapy, including canine physical therapy, animal assisted therapy, gait analysis and motion analysis, the use of modalities such as electrical stimulation and therapeutic ultrasound, as well as clinical infectious disease research.

J. Randy Walker, PT, PhD

Professor Emeritus

Physical Therapy

Dr. Denis Marcellin-Little
Associate Professor, Orthopedics

Department of Clinical Sciences

College of Veterinary Medicine

North Carolina State University

Dr. Marcellin completed his doctor of veterinary medicine training in Toulouse, France. He is a Diplomate of both the European and American College of Veterinary Surgeons. Dr. Marcellin is recognized as an authority in the field of veterinary orthopedics. His areas of interest include total hip replacement, external fixation, treatment of bone deformities and physical therapy. His current research interests include the biological response to orthopedic implants, distraction osteogenesis and canine developmental orthopedic diseases.

Dr. Ron Goulet is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He received a BSCE from Northwestern University in 1976. He worked in the Chicago area as a project engineer for a consulting firm and as an applications engineer for a manufacturer of ash handling systems then in Pittsburgh as manager of utility sales and marketing for a competitor serving the power industry. In 1986, Goulet earned Professional Registration in the state of Maine, started Consultech, a sole proprietorship, and delivered expert engineering consulting services to legal and insurance clients in matters involving injury, event reconstruction and property loss. He earned an Engineering PhD from the University of New Hampshire in 1997 defending a thesis in the field of experimental fracture mechanics. Goulet joined the CECS faculty in 1998, taught undergrad and graduate courses in engineering mechanics and materials science and directed the UTC Orthopedic Biomechanics Research Laboratory, a collaboration with the UT College of Medicine, Dept. of Orthopedic Surgery. Goulet’s research interests include improving the effectiveness of engineering education, experimental orthopedic biomechanics and applied experimental mechanics.

Hongyu Ru, PhD

Clinical Assistant Professor of Biostatistics


I trust this line-up shall meet the high demands of Herlock Sholmes, even.

I have cut out the most important bits, but anybody who wants can find the article on the net.

Here we go:

Objectives

To evaluate the accuracy of detection of temperature differences among skin sites of lay individuals and manual physical therapists.

Methods

Forty-four manual physical therapists and 44 lay individuals were recruited. Subjects palpated two temperature-controlled surfaces that ranged in temperature between 30 and 35 °C and varied randomly by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 °C for 10 s. The subjects were then asked to identify the warmer pad.

Results

Accuracy increased with larger temperature differences. Accuracy of detection of 1 and 3 °C temperature differences was higher in manual physical therapists than lay individuals.

Discussion

Palpation can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner.

+++

Now, that was from the summary, but here are the pertinent parts from the discussion:

Palpation is an integral part of the physical examination of soft tissues. Tissue changes, particularly inflammation, lead to changes in skin temperature [8–10]. The results of the current study indicate that manual physical therapists and laypersons can detect temperature differences as small as 1–2 °C, making palpation a valid tool when screening for pathology involving increased tissue temperature.

We accepted our hypothesis that the rate of accurate detection by manual physical therapists and by lay individuals increased when temperature differences between plates increased. Lay individuals accurately detected the warmer plate only two thirds of the time when differences were 1 or 2 °C, accurately detected the warmer plate approximately 90% of the time when the temperature difference was 4 °C, and >95% when the difference was 5 °C. Manual physical therapists accurately detected the warmer plate > three quarters of the time when differences were 1 or 2 °C and detected differences of ≥3 °C with an accuracy >95%. We accepted our hypothesis that manual physical therapists were more accurate than lay individuals for smaller gradients (1 and 3°). These differences disappeared with larger gradients, as the accuracy of lay individuals approached 100%. The source of the increased accuracy observed in manual physical therapists compared to lay individuals is not known. Increased accuracy could result from differences in palpation technique or in the cognitive processing of perceived temperatures differences. Palpation technique likely influences thermal perception. Thermal perception differs based on the area of contact and on contact mechanics.

We concluded that palpation can accurately detect temperature differences between skin sites. Accuracy increases with larger temperature differences. Manual physical therapists are more accurate than lay individuals.

So, palpation is a very useful and not very unexact method of determining body warmth. Physical therapists were able to tell differences of 1 or 2 degrees in 75 per cent of the cases, and when the difference was more than 3 degrees, they were able to tell in 95 per cent of the cases. Lay persons were less skilled, but I think we may rule out that Phillips was in any way a lay person.
He was instead an extremely skilled medico with heaps of experience. And he knew in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street that he was dealing with a case where it was of the utmost importance that he got it right - there cannot have been any sloppy work.

One more thin that has dawned on me while being away for some little time is how every medico who was called out to palpate for body warmth actually brought along a test kit so he would not get things wrong: himself. If Phillips had any doubt about how a living person would feel, all he had to do would be to feel his own skin!

Going on the above, I would say that far from dismissing Phillips, we should dismiss once and for all the nutty idea that palpating for warmth was always going to get things very wrong. Apparently, the possibility that Phillips would have gotten the temperature three degrees wrong or more is less than 5 per cent. And since the temperature falls by 0,8 degrees Celsius per hour and not at all during the first half to one hour, it would not have fallen at all or very little in Chapmans body if she had only been dead for a mere hour. And guess what: Phillips would not have missed out on that, as per the above.

I believe this is the first truly relevant paper presented to date on this thread. It should make Herlock very happy, since he has lamented over how I have had a view without being a medically versed man, whereas his own misinterpretations of heaps of experts have been passed off as fact.

So let´s sign off by repeating this phrase: Palpation can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner.

... and, of course, by wawing goodbye to the witnesses. Adieu, Mrs Long, you never saw Annie Chapman, and farewell, Albert Cadosch, you never heard her.

I may or may not answer the oncoming protests by Herlock et al "But my experts cannot be refuted, Phillips must be thrown to the wolves. Please, PLEASE!" I actually have other things to do, and I am in the process of looking at more material, so throwing horse manure is not at the top off my bucket list right now.

Nor do I need to - I just proved that palpation for temperature is normally fairly exact.

This article is about detecting the difference, not the absolute, temperature. Being able to tell if one part is warmer than another does not mean you can tell what the temperature is. Perhaps the easiest analogy to understand this is notes on a piano. Most people can tell if you hit the same key twice or if you hit two adjacent keys, so they can detect the difference in the notes. However, very few people could tell you which keys were pressed (few have what is called "absolute pitch", but most people have very good relative pitch. To determine ToD by touch you would have to have "absolute" temperature detection, not relative temperature.

- Jeff

[Herlock Sholmes]

I struggle to understand why this argument persists. We have absolute clarity from the highest authority in the land that temperature based estimates of time of death are so unreliable that they are not to be used in criminal investigations.

I know that I don’t win any popularity awards in some quarters when I say this Eten but the reason the argument persists isn’t simply because some have faith in Phillips or particularly doubt Richardson, Cadosch and Long it's because some posters need an earlie TOD to bolster theories. There’s no other way of putting it. As I’ve posted before it can hardly be a coincidence that the three strongest supporters of the Phillips TOD all have theories that would either be completely disproven or severely weakened by a later TOD. Added to the 3 we have The Baron who sole reason for existence on this Forum is to disagree with me on whatever subject.

[Herlock Sholmes]

This article is about detecting the difference, not the absolute, temperature. Being able to tell if one part is warmer than another does not mean you can tell what the temperature is. Perhaps the easiest analogy to understand this is notes on a piano. Most people can tell if you hit the same key twice or if you hit two adjacent keys, so they can detect the difference in the notes. However, very few people could tell you which keys were pressed (few have what is called "absolute pitch", but most people have very good relative pitch. To determine ToD by touch you would have to have "absolute" temperature detection, not relative temperature.

- Jeff