Alexandre Lacassagne

He was a specialist in the field of toxicology, and was a pioneer regarding bloodstain pattern analysis and the research of bullet markings and their relationship to specific weapons.

Lacassagne became famous because of his expertise in various criminal affairs, including the "malle à Gouffé" in 1889,[4] the assassination of President Sadi Carnot, stabbed in 1894 by the Italian anarchist Caserio, and the case of Joseph Vacher (1869–1898), one of the first known French serial killers.

[1] Politically, Lacassagne supported the initiative of his friend Léon Gambetta, an Opportunist Republican, in favour of the 27 May 1885 Act establishing penal colonies, dubbed "Law on relegation of recidivists" (the bill had been introduced by Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau and Martin Feuillée).

He also opposed the abolition of death penalty, proposed in 1906 by an alliance of Radicals and Socialists and rejected in 1908, as he considered that some criminals were irredeemable.

[1] In 1877, with Apollinaire Bouchardat and Émile Vallin, he was a founding member of the "Société de Médecine publique et d'Hygiène professionnelle"[5][6][7] Lacassagne died in Lyon.

[13] They considered that the social environment had a physiological influence on the brain, and thus opposed Lombroso's theory which alleged that criminal factors were not only biological, but exclusively individual.