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An Experimental and Anatomical Study

HAROLD PLOTNICK, M.D.; HERMANN PINKUS, M.D.

AMA Arch Derm. 1958;77(1):12-17.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Introduction

Fingerprint experts hold that the dermal print is of considerable practical importance in establishing the identity of bodies when the epidermis has been altered by such processes as maceration, desiccation, mummification, or putrefaction.¹ The dermal print, though finer and less clear-cut than the epidermal one, possesses the same ridge details as the outer surface layer of the epidermis and is just as effective for identification purposes.²

Review of the available literature has failed to reveal any detailed studies supporting this viewpoint. Through the employment of clinical and criminologic laboratory methods we believe that we have been able to demonstrate that this concept is true and valid.

The diagrammatic reproduction of the volar ridged skin of the finger (Fig. 1) by F. Pinkus³ served as a starting point in our studies. It shows that for each superficial ridge (crista) there are two . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Detroit

From the Department of Dermatology, Wayne State University College of Medicine, and the Receiving Hospital of the City of Detroit.

Footnotes
Submitted for publication July 5, 1957.

This study was undertaken as a result of the interest in this problem on the part of Robert J. Roth, Supervisor, Massachusetts State Bureau of Identification, Boston.

This report grew out of an actual case in Boston in which one of us (Dr. Pinkus) was consulted by the police department and asked to explain the anatomical basis of the differences between epidermal and dermal fingerprints. The police had found the body of a man and suspected that he had been murdered by his wife and dumped into the water. All the skin had come off the fingers, but prints were taken from the denuded dermal surfaces. It was up to the police to convince the jury of the identity of these prints with ordinary prints on file. They built up a nice case with the information supplied, but the wife confessed just before the trial opened and so all the effort had been for naught.

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