<P> In 16th - century Europe, medical practitioners in army and university settings began to gather information on the cause and manner of death . Ambroise Paré, a French army surgeon, systematically studied the effects of violent death on internal organs . Two Italian surgeons, Fortunato Fidelis and Paolo Zacchia, laid the foundation of modern pathology by studying changes that occurred in the structure of the body as the result of disease . In the late 18th century, writings on these topics began to appear . These included A Treatise on Forensic Medicine and Public Health by the French physician Francois Immanuele Fodéré and The Complete System of Police Medicine by the German medical expert Johann Peter Frank . </P> <P> As the rational values of the Enlightenment era increasingly permeated society in the 18th century, criminal investigation became a more evidence - based, rational procedure − the use of torture to force confessions was curtailed, and belief in witchcraft and other powers of the occult largely ceased to influence the court's decisions . Two examples of English forensic science in individual legal proceedings demonstrate the increasing use of logic and procedure in criminal investigations at the time . In 1784, in Lancaster, John Toms was tried and convicted for murdering Edward Culshaw with a pistol . When the dead body of Culshaw was examined, a pistol wad (crushed paper used to secure powder and balls in the muzzle) found in his head wound matched perfectly with a torn newspaper found in Toms's pocket, leading to the conviction . </P> <P> In Warwick 1816, a farm laborer was tried and convicted of the murder of a young maidservant . She had been drowned in a shallow pool and bore the marks of violent assault . The police found footprints and an impression from corduroy cloth with a sewn patch in the damp earth near the pool . There were also scattered grains of wheat and chaff . The breeches of a farm labourer who had been threshing wheat nearby were examined and corresponded exactly to the impression in the earth near the pool . </P> <P> A method for detecting arsenious oxide, simple arsenic, in corpses was devised in 1773 by the Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele . His work was expanded, in 1806, by German chemist Valentin Ross, who learned to detect the poison in the walls of a victim's stomach . </P>

When were footprints first used in forensic science