The single intradermal comparative cervical tuberculin (SICCT) test and post-mortem examination are the main diagnostic tools for bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle in the British Isles. Latent class modelling is often used to estimate the bTB test characteristics due to the absence of a gold standard. However, the reported sensitivity of especially the SICCT test has shown a lot of variation. We applied both the Hui–Walter latent class model under the Bayesian framework and the Bayesian model specified at the animal level, including various risk factors as predictors, to estimate the SICCT test and post-mortem test characteristics. Data were collected from all cattle slaughtered in abattoirs in Northern Ireland in 2015. Both models showed comparable posterior median estimation for the sensitivity of the SICCT test (88.61% and 90.56%, respectively) using standard interpretation and for post-mortem examination (53.65% and 53.79%, respectively). Both models showed almost identical posterior median estimates for the specificity (99.99% vs. 99.80% for SICCT test at standard interpretation and 99.66% vs. 99.86% for post-mortem examination). The animal-level model showed slightly narrower posterior 95% credible intervals. Notably, this study was carried out in slaughtered cattle which may not be representative for the general cattle population.

Post-mortem examination continues to play an important surveillance role in the bovine tuberculosis (bTB) eradication programme in Northern Ireland. It is estimated that 18–28% of new bTB herd breakdowns are disclosed by the detection of bTB lesions in animals routinely slaughtered. The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of different slaughterhouses in Northern Ireland in detecting bTB-lesioned animals at routine slaughter (LRS) and to apply the findings to maximize the sensitivity of bTB slaughterhouse surveillance. Univariate statistical analysis on cattle slaughtered in Northern Ireland during 2011–2013 revealed that the risk of LRS disclosure varied between slaughterhouses, ranging from 0·08% to 0·54%. Furthermore, the risk of confirmation of these LRS as bTB varied between slaughterhouses, ranging from 57·9% to 72·4%. Logistic regression modelling of selected risk factors found that the risk of LRS disclosure increased with age, and was higher in purchased animals, during winter months, in animals coming from high bTB incidence areas and in animals slaughtered from herds with a bTB restriction in the last 2–3 years. Adjusting for these selected factors, the risk of LRS disclosure and bTB confirmation changed very little from the univariable analysis, suggesting that differences in disclosure risks between slaughterhouses were likely to be due to factors related to the slaughterhouses, rather than to the risk status of the animals presented. Examination of procedures within these slaughterhouses is recommended to identify ways that could increase the sensitivity of their bTB surveillance.

This article explores the status, apparatus and character of forensic pathology in the inter-war period, with a special emphasis on the ‘people’s pathologist’, Bernard Spilsbury. The broad expert and public profile of forensic pathology, of which Spilsbury was the most prominent contemporary representative, will be outlined and discussed. In so doing, close attention will be paid to the courtroom strategies by which he and other experts translated their isolated post-mortem encounters with the dead body into effective testimony.

Pathologists built a high-profile practice that transfixed the popular, legal and scientific imagination, and this article also explores, through the celebrated 1925 murder trial of Norman Thorne, how Spilsbury’s courtroom performance focused critical attention on the practices of pathology itself, which threatened to destabilise the status of forensic pathology. In particular, the Thorne case raised questions about the interrelation between bruising and putrefaction as sources of interpretative anxiety. Here, the question of practice is vital, especially in understanding how Spilsbury’s findings clashed with those of rival pathologists whose autopsies centred on a corpse that had undergone further putrefactive changes and that had thereby mutated as an evidentiary object. Examining how pathologists dealt with interpretative problems raised by the instability of their core investigative object enables an analysis of the ways in which pathological investigation of homicide was inflected with a series of conceptual, professional and cultural difficulties stemming in significant ways from the materiality of the corpse itself.

This article presents early findings of a larger study of twentieth-century English homicide investigation which focuses on the interaction between two dominant forensic regimes: the first, outlined in part here, is a body-centred forensics, associated with the lone, ‘celebrity’ pathologist, his scalpel and the mortuary slab; the second is a ‘forensics of things’ centred on the laboratory and its associated technologies of trace analysis (hair, blood, fibres), deployed in closed technician-dominated spaces and in the regimentally managed crime scene. Future work will seek to illuminate the shifting landscape of English forensics by following the historical interplay between these two powerful investigative models.

Concerns have emerged in recent years with regard to the role to be played by the pathologist in reaching a final diagnosis. When considering the field of the congenitally malformed heart, it is true that the richness of detail now provided by imaging techniques is truly amazing. Alongside these developments, there has also been a significant decline in the number of autopsies performed in tertiary medial centres around the World. In this review, we consider some of the factors that have contributed to this decrease in autopsies, and review the reasons why strong steps should be taken to reverse this trend.

When considering the reasons for the decline in autopsies, there can be little doubt that the scandal devolving on inappropriate retention of organs, which came to light in the United Kingdom, but which had reverberations throughout the World, contributed in no small way to the reticence of families to grant appropriate permission to conduct a post-mortem examination. It is sincerely hoped that the changes in practise that followed these revelations will stop, and indeed reverse, this unfortunate decline. The inappropriate retention of organs came into the public domain in an attempt to emphasise the value of the autopsy in clinical practise, research, and education. All of these good reasons for performing the autopsy remain.

From the stance of education, we emphasise the importance of retaining existing archives, which have long since proved their value. From the stance of improving clinical practise, we reiterate that the attitude of the morphologist, working side-by-side with the clinician or surgeon, has always been fundamental in expanding this aspect of knowledge. We recognise, nonetheless, that performance of the autopsy still carries financial considerations. In this respect, when considering the congenitally malformed heart, we stress the option of having the pathologist working in harness with an experienced cardiac morphologist, or alternatively with a properly trained pathologist’s assistant. In terms of training, we show how, with the advantage of a few simple rules, it becomes an easy matter to describe and analyse the congenitally malformed heart. Thereafter, having reviewed means of increasing the number of autopsies, and discussing new techniques, we complete our review with a detailed account of the fetal, perinatal, and paediatric autopsy in the patients with a congenitally malformed heart, taking particular account of the role to be played by the properly trained pathologist’s assistant.