The successes of forensic medicine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries led to the emergence of numerous legends and myths. One of such widespread and enduring legends is the legend that a portrait of a murderer is imprinted in the eye of the murdered. They even found their own name for the new technology - optography, but it quickly became clear that this was just a myth. But is it possible today or tomorrow to create a technology that solves similar forensic problems?
The birth and death of optography
The legend of the "photograph" of the murderer in the pupil of the corpse was reflected in the plot of the novel "The Kip Brothers" by Jules Verne. In describing the murder of Captain Harry Gibson, Jules Verne mentions a photograph taken with the murdered man's eyes still open. This photograph played a decisive role in the acquittal of the Kip brothers, who were innocently accused of murder, and exposed the real killers - the sailors Fleige Volt and Win Mod, whose images, captured on the retina of the victim, were displayed in the photograph.
How great was the belief in the reality of optography (as the phenomenon of preserving the image of a murderer in the eyes of a corpse was called) is shown by the following case. On a January evening in 1873, the murder of Hieromonk Hilarion of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra took place in St. Petersburg.
This is how I. D. Putilin, an eyewitness to those events, draws one of the moments of the inspection of the scene:
“Step aside, gentlemen! - the doctor turned to us. We moved away from the window. The doctor bent low over the corpse and gazed intently into Hilarion's dead eyes.
Several agonizing minutes passed. - Excuse me, doctor, - began the prosecutor, - why are you so intently looking into the eyes of the murdered man? - Don't you guess? You see, some modern Western forensic scientists have made a very important and valuable discovery. It turns out, according to their observations, that in other cases the eyes of the murdered, like a photographic plate, capture the image of the killer. This happens when the dying gaze of the victim meets the gaze of the killer … Unfortunately, in this case, this obviously did not happen. The pupil is dull, darkened … yes … yes, nothing, absolutely nothing is visible."
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I wonder what "scientific discoveries" the doctor referred to? The modern Russian scientist Sergei Ryazantsev in his book "Thanatology - the Science of Death" reports the following in connection with the problem of optography. In 1876, the German physiologist Franz Bol discovered a bright red pigment in the rods of a frog's retina, later called visual purple or rhodopsin. This pigment lost its color under the influence of bright rays of light, which was the initial stage of reactions that ended with rod vision.
Particularly great interest in the study of rhodopsin was shown by the Heidelberg Laboratory, headed by Professor W. Kuehne. Kuehne realized that by using a pigment that was discolored by light, a photograph could be taken with a living eye. He called this method optography, and the images obtained with it - optograms.
One of the first Kuehne optograms was obtained as follows. The white rabbit was fixed in a position in which the head was turned towards the lattice window. After that, the animal's head was cut off, the eyes were taken out, the retina was fixed in a solution of alum. The next day, Kuehne saw on the retina a picture of a window with a clear pattern of bars.
In November 1880, Kuehne examined the retina of an executed criminal. Ten minutes after the execution, he removed the entire retina from his left eye and received a clear optogram resembling the steps of a staircase. However, Kuehne could not finally determine what the resulting optogram meant.
Bodies fighting crime immediately became interested in Kuehne's discovery. Chief of Police of Berlin Modai ordered to examine the eyes of one of the killed in order to reveal the identity of the killer. The study was carried out, the retina was photographed, the optogram was made, but the image of the killer was not on it.
Nevertheless, Kuehne's discovery was taken advantage of by sensation hunters - newspaper reporters. In newspapers and magazines from different countries, reports began to appear that the possibility of identifying the killer by the imprint in the victim's eye had been proven. However, all these messages on closer analysis turned out to be newspaper ducks. Sometimes reporters were misled by the investigators themselves into wishful thinking. As for the criminals, this did not stop them from committing crimes - now, while killing, they began to gouge out the victim's eyes, fearing that their image would be preserved in them. Tens of thousands of murdered people with gouged eyes are the only real "legacy" of the myth …
Here is the conclusion of Sergei Ryazantsev: “Summing up the centennial circulation of the legend of optography, we can state with full confidence that although photography with the help of rhodopsin is in principle possible, it has no future in the field of practice. First, it is possible to capture the retina only with very bright and contrasting images (such as the Kuehne grating), but not photographic portraits. And, secondly, even to obtain such primitive images, it is necessary to fix the retina in chemical reagents immediately after death. Therefore, the main interest in studying the phenomenon of rhodopsin is to study the problems of the chemistry of vision, which can in no way be related to the issues of forensic science."
New technologies
However, the legend of optography stubbornly refuses to die. For example, the heroes of the famous blockbuster "Wild, Wild, Wild West" extract a posthumous image from the severed head of a murdered person, using it as … a slide projector. A light burns inside the head, an image is sent to the screen through the eyes - and of such quality that you can even read the words on the invitation card sticking out of the killer's pocket.
This is, of course, the flight of imagination of the witty filmmakers. But is it really possible to find technology that allows forensic experts to see the face of the killer with the help of a corpse?
Optography studied images on the retina. But the image goes through other stages of the path until it is fixed in the brain as an image. Is it possible to "intercept" him at any of these stages?
The optic nerve is of primary interest. It is the link between the eye and those parts of the brain that are responsible for visual perception. The eye encodes the received visual information in the form of an electrical code, this code passes through the optic nerve, and the brain decodes and assimilates it in the form of visual images.
As the scientific press reported (and we published these messages), several years ago, American scientists were able to uncover the code transmitted through the rat's optic nerve. In addition, they recorded impulses transmitted along the rat's optic nerve, and when they were reproduced and fired again along the optic nerve, the rat saw again what it had seen before.
Unfortunately, this discovery has passed without much attention from the scientific community, although it has tremendous, EPOCHAL significance. This is, in fact, the discovery of a new telecommunication system, a new "television", when the TV signal goes directly to the brain, and the viewer sees with his own eyes what is being broadcast to him.
So far, the development of this new telecommunications has been stopped by the Convention on the Ban of Experiments on the Brain, signed in the 1960s by the leading countries of the world, including the USSR. And hardly anyone will voluntarily agree to implantation of electrodes into the optic nerves, which will read their information for recording or reproduce what has been recorded.
In addition, some difficulties are theoretically possible. The fact is that vision is not just the process of transmitting visual information from the eye to the brain, but their joint work, and therefore the recording of the signal traveling along the optic nerve reflects this work (eye jumps in recognizing the image of an object), and is not an analog say, a conventional television picture.
However, this new technology could be actively developed if scientists find a way to connect to the optic nerve without surgery. I can offer the following technological solution. The RECORDING device can read them from the bottom of the eyeball, where the signal is formed at the endings of the optic nerve. This is definitely a very complex device. But much simpler is the apparatus that TRANSLATIONS the signals going along the optic nerve. These are dark glasses that immerse the eyes in complete darkness, and at the same time they send powerful (amplified many times) signals in the encoding of the human optic nerve code to the fundus area. As a result, a person will see not with his eyes, but with the optic nerve. By the way, here it is easy to return vision to people who are deprived of eyes, but have optic nerves along the way: for this it is enough to create a decoder,converting an image into an optic nerve coding signal. And millions of blind people will gain sight.
And finally, another side of this amazing new technology is REMOTE ACCESS. It will allow people to control robots or devices at a distance, as if staying in their body and seeing everything as if “through their eyes”.
As for the broadcasting sphere, there are tremendous prospects. This new "television" will allow you to create one hundred percent "presence effect", to see films through the eyes of their heroes, to see news through the eyes of eyewitnesses. And in his personal life, a person will have the opportunity to write down some important or pleasant moments of his life the way his eyes saw, so that later he could see it again with his own eyes.
This is where it is worth remembering about optography and forensics. At the same time, let me remind you that today, technologies for personal security of a person are actively developing in parallel. True, we in the CIS practically do not know these technologies, since although we have lived for 15 years under capitalism, our capitalism is kind of strange, with beggarly salaries. But our European neighbors are different. And personal security technologies have been actively developing there for a long time.
Among them:
- parents provide their children with mobile phones so that they can find out where the child is at any moment;
- children, the elderly and, in general, everyone who wants to are equipped with urgent warning devices about a critical situation: this is a key fob, one press of the button of which gives a call to the rescue service, and the key fob itself gives signals that allow you to instantly find its coordinates, where the rescue service leaves;
- people with a dangerous profession (and generally everyone) can implant a microscopic sensor under the skin (which cannot be found visually or with instruments), this sensor is a beacon of their location through a satellite orientation system; thus, no matter what happens to them, they will instantly be found anywhere in the world. This technology allows you to immediately track down kidnapped businessmen, missing agents or stolen children. Its effectiveness is amazing.
By the way, a number of developed countries today are considering the issue of implanting such sensors in general to all employees of special forces, and in Israel, the USA, England, France, a number of units, whose activities are especially dangerous, have long been equipped with them.
There are many other personal safety technologies out there, and more are coming soon. So somewhere at the junction of them and the technology of new telecommunications using signals from the optic nerve, something will appear that, in fact, will become the implementation of tasks that were once assigned to optography, but were never solved.
For example, I will propose the following technology: at the moment of danger, a person presses a button on the "safety key fob", which simultaneously turns on the mechanism for transmitting to the rescue service all the visual information that goes through the person's optic nerves at that time. This allows you to capture the picture of the crime through the eyes of the victim. Seems fantastic? But this is quite realistic in the era of nanotechnology, on the threshold of which we are standing.
It is quite possible that if not our children, then our grandchildren will use these devices. The whole picture of the crime will be transferred to the rescue service and forensic specialists, who will not need to look into the pupil of the murdered person to see the killer's face. The picture of the crime will do them a different way - and in all details. Of course, criminals who plan crimes in advance can take this into account - and then this technology will not help find the killers. But on the other hand, millions of crimes committed by drunken hooligans, street bandits, drug addicts, etc. will be immediately revealed upon the commission. And this is the bulk of all crimes. And what is important - this technology will stop the masses of criminals, as they will be afraid of immediate exposure. That is, its main value is in crime prevention.
