Marc-Guillaume-Alfonce Bergeret
Definition
French physician who in 1855 published the first Western case in which successive insect generations were used to estimate how long a mummified infant had been dead, founding the PMI estimation tradition in European forensic science.
- Profession
- French physician
- Publication year
- 1855
- Case
- Mummified infant
- Contribution
- First Western use of insect succession for PMI
Common questions
What made Bergeret's 1855 case a founding moment for forensic entomology?+
He reasoned from the successive insect generations found colonising the remains that a minimum time since death could be estimated, applying the concept of insect succession to a real investigation rather than treating insect presence as incidental, which established the method later formalised by Megnin and others.
Why is Bergeret's case specifically noted as the first Western example rather than the first overall?+
Earlier accounts of using insect evidence in death investigation, notably a 13th-century Chinese case recorded by Song Ci, predate Bergeret by centuries, so his significance is in founding the European and later broader Western forensic entomology tradition, not in originating the underlying idea.
Related terms
- Jean-Pierre Mégnin (1828-1905)
- French military veterinarian and arachnologist who published 'La Faune des Cadavres' in 1894, the first systematic description of the eight-wave succession model...
- La Faune Des Cadavres
- Mégnin's 1894 book 'The Fauna of Corpses', the foundational text of systematic forensic entomology. It organised insect succession into distinct waves and...
- M. Lee Goff
- American forensic entomologist whose casework in Hawaii from the 1980s onward and whose 2000 book 'A Fly for the Prosecution' helped establish...
- Song Ci (1186-1249)
- Chinese forensic investigator and judge whose 1247 manual 'Xi Yuan Ji Lu' (Washing Away of Wrongs) contains the oldest documented case of...
- Washing Away of Wrongs
- The common English title for Song Ci's 'Xi Yuan Ji Lu', a Chinese forensic medicine manual that remained an official judicial reference...