0582 Slide – Georgia Supreme Court Leo Frank Appeals Documents, 1913, 1914

Visible Translated Text Is As Follows:

blow on the outside of the head by concussion without any appreciable lesion on the outside of the head.

DR. WILLIS F. WESTMORELAND, sworn for the defendant.

DIRECT EXAMINATION. A practicing physician for twenty eight years, general practice and surgery. A professor of surgery for twenty years, and formerly president of the State Board of Health. If the body of a girl between thirteen and fourteen years old was embalmed about ten hours after death, after taking out a gallon of fluid and putting in a gallon of embalming fluid, of which 8% is formaldehyde and the body is buried and nine or ten days after, upon a post-mortem examination a cut an inch and a half long cutting through the skull in some places was found by the ear, and the skull was opened and on the inside of the skull no actual break of the skull was found, but a little hemorrhage under the skull corresponding to this point where the blow had been delivered and no pressure on the brain was caused, and no injury to the brain occurred, it would be impossible to tell whether or not that would have produced unconsciousness before death. Skull may be fractured without producing unconsciousness. Death may be produced by a blow on such head that leaves very little outward signs. From looking at a wound without any knowledge of the amount of blood lost one could not tell whether it was inflicted before or after death. One could not tell from looking at a wound of that sort from which direction it was inflicted. (In answer to question as to whether he had any personal feeling against Dr. Harris, witness answered "no" but that he had preferred charges with State Board of Health, charging Dr. Harris with professional dishonesty.) A blunt surface can produce a wound that would look like a cut. If in the case of the same patient the stomach was taken out and in it was found wheat bread and cabbage, some of the cabbage looking like that (State's Exhibit G), and thirty two degrees of combined hydrochloric acid and substantially nothing in the small intestine, and feces some five feet away, it would be impossible to form a reliable opinion that cabbage