Low Down

Drugs of dependence may be absorbed orally, by intra venous, subcutaneous or - rarely intramuscular injection, by smoking, or by nasal sniffing. The routine at autopsy, in respect of obtaining samples for toxicological analysis, is altered according to the route of administration. As mixing of drugs and addition of non-narcotic drugs is common, itis the usual practice to take a wide range of samples even if the primary route is known with some degree of certainty For example, an addict dying 'on the needle' where intravenous injection is obvious, will still have stomach contents taken for investigation. The standard samples should be taken, as described in a previous chapter, comprising several samples of venous blood (one with fluoride), stomach and contents, liver and urine. In some circumstances, additional samples such as bile, cerebrospinal fluid and vitreous humour may be taken, as well as brain or kidney. The great advances in the analytical techniques allow the analysis...

  To understand the role of English and, therefore, English language teaching in these different circles, we must first unpack the issues around how to define a language. We will therefore begin with a discussion of language variety and standard language, and then move on to discuss who is a native speaker and who can teach English. All languages vary depending on characteristics of the user—age, gender, region, social class, and ethnicity—and the use to which the language is put—speaking or writing to whom, about what, for what purpose, using what medium of communication. “To the extent that speakers share knowledge of the communicative constraints and options governing a significant number of social situations, they can be said to be members of the same speech community”, linguistic study of language use in speech communities is called sociolinguistics. Speech communities are not homogeneous and speakers can belong to a number of different speech communities. So, for example, whi...

  Virtually all forensic pathologists deal not only with criminal,  suspicious, accidental and suicidal deaths, but with a wide range of deaths from natural causes. Many of these are sudden, unexpected, clinically unexplained or otherwise obscure,  even though there need be no unnatural element in their  causation. It is good that such a large substrate of natural deaths is available to most forensic pathologists: the situation where they deal exclusively with trauma and crime is professionally unhealthy, as they become progressively more out of touch - - with morbid anatomy, and lose daily contact with disease processes and uninjured tissues and organs. Involvement with natural death means frequent professional intercourse with clinicians and non-forensic pathologists, with all the consequent benefits of cross-fertilization of knowledge and ideas. To work in a totally forensic vacuum is to lose touch with pathological and clinical reality, which is essential for a...