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In recent years, the enactment of uniform national regulations concerning postmortem examination has become a persistent demand. There is strong criticism of the reliability of coroner's inquest. The education of most of the coroners in forensic medicine is found to be insufficient, and many experts report that medical examiners partly are neglectful for the inquest. The classification of the manner of death is also said to be deficient, the rate of misdiagnosis being only little below 50%. Thus much emphasis is put on demanding a reinforced training of doctors in the field of the external examination of corpses. But only few of those reports make allowance for the fact that most of the present deficiencies have their origin in the 19th century. As a matter of fact, from the outset the practice of coroner's inquest gave rise to criticism. Thus the present article traces the historical roots of postmortem examination in Germany. Special emphasis is placed on a comparison between the infancies of coroner's inquest and the current state. Actual and historical imperfections in the system of postmortem examination and striking similarities are pointed out.