Song Ci

Song Ci (1186 to 1249) was a Chinese physician, judge and forensic medical scientist of the Southern Song dynasty, widely regarded as the founder of forensic medicine and forensic entomology. Born in Jianyang, in what is now Fujian province, he served as a presiding judge in the high courts of the Song dynasty and later as a criminal court judge in Hunan province, drawing on decades of direct casework examining the dead. His treatise Xi Yuan Ji Lu, known in English as Collected Cases of Injustice Rectified, systematized methods for determining cause of death, distinguishing suicide from homicide, and interpreting wounds and injuries, and it contains what is recognized as the oldest known documented use of forensic entomology anywhere in the world. The work remained the standard reference for coroners across imperial China for centuries after his death and is studied today as a founding text of forensic science.