ALS between Dublin physician W.H. Burke and Alfred Swaine Taylor dated 1857

[TAYLOR, Alfred Swain 1806-1880); BURKE, W. H. Autograph letter signed to the father of forensic science, Alfred Swaine Taylor.
 
Burke writes about a discrepancy in the calculation of blood volume in his “Elements of Medical Jurisprudence”.
 
Dublin, 21 Lower Leeson Street, 23 August 1857.
 
Autograph letter signed, 3 pp., neatly written in brown ink; lightly toned, a few faint marks, folds as mailed, very good.
 
A detailed, friendly letter from Dublin physician W. H. Burke to Alfred Swaine Taylor (1806–1880), the pioneering forensic toxicologist and author of the standard Victorian textbook Elements of Medical Jurisprudence. Taylor’s treatise shaped British legal medicine for half a century and was cited in countless poisoning trials, earning him the reputation of “the father of English forensic science.”
 
Burke writes from 21 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, noting a numerical inconsistency in Taylor’s fifth edition (page 251), where the proportion of blood to body weight is stated as one-fifth, while standard physiological sources give nearer one-thirteenth. Comparing Taylor’s figure with Foster’s Physiology and Bowman’s later edition, he worries that “such discrepancies between standard authorities might be the cause of a serious laugh at the expense of our legal friends.” He ends apologetically but warmly, praising the “liberal spirit” of Taylor’s work.
 
Written only a year after Taylor’s celebrated testimony in the William Palmer poisoning case, the letter is a fine example of the mid-Victorian professional network that surrounded him — physicians and forensic specialists who treated his textbooks almost as living scientific documents.