The same expertise we learned at the autopsy table can be applied to living people who've been shot, battered, or raped. The search for trace evidence is the same.

I saw why people died and how they died. I saw gunshot wounds and liver failure. It was a good learning experience, so I came regularly on weekends and holidays.

Arsenic sticks around and today it's easily found after death if somebody thinks of looking for it, because the problem with arsenic, it isn't looked for in the common tests for drugs.

That was after Napoleon died because there is still a controversy as to whether Napoleon was poisoned with arsenic. And the French say the British did it and the British say the French did it, but he died before the test for arsenic was available.

I get involved if a problem comes up after the death has been investigated by the local authority.

It seemed ironic that Lowell Levine and I, who were both Jewish, were going over to identify the remains of a man who was so anti-Semitic.

That made me think I could contribute more to society by looking at people on the autopsy table and feeding back the findings so that lots of people could benefit, rather than just treating patients one at a time.

I also get involved with exhuming bodies when new information has become available.

That's why it was so common because there was no test for it until about the 1830s; a test for arsenic was developed.