Overview

Written to assist in large-scale investigations of human rights violations, this seminal work describes the mechanisms of injuries, synthesizes variations in wounding patterns, and constructs an epidemiological framework for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting physical evidence for use at trial. It presents protocols for systemic data collection and methods for differential wound diagnosis. Contributions evaluate blasting injuries, blunt force trauma, skeletal evidence of torture, sharp force trauma, and gunfire injuries. Illustrated with more than 600 photographs, each chapter discusses wounding mechanisms, wound pathophysiology, relevant legal examples, and contributed case studies.