Often during professional work with Forensic Odontology( FO) you get the question: Is it not very unpleasant and disagreeable to work within your subject? A lot of the working time we have to make intraoral examinations in bodies, which often are in an advanced stage of putrefaction or in another disagreeable condition (i.e. severe burned or drowned people where the bodies have taken up a lot of water and so on).

-Can you ever get used to do such things? Is another question and -How did your interest for this subject start?

Today it is not any big problem for myself, since I am not regulary working practical with FO. I am still a member in the Swedish Identification Commission, but else I work 100 % within Maxillo-Facial Radiology, a subject that also is very exciting.

It was during the 80´s that I worked 50% in FO besides Radiology. But I can still remember how it was and I will try to answer these questions today, when I have a possibility to look back with some reflection.

Of course it was unpleasant sometimes. Especially with bodies that had been in the water for a long time, but where the soft tissue still remained, severely changes due to uptake of water. The smell was usually very unpleasant and that might be biggest problem sometimes. But I can also remember times when I worked as a general practitioner, when my normal patient showed up with very unpleasant mouths. They came without having recently brushed their teeth and some of them could really have an unpleasant smell from the mouth, due to bad oral hygiene. But you get used to it, and it is the same in Forensic Odontology. Since I worked halftime only with FO I used to say to my friends, that of course it is nice to be able to leave the mortuary after some hours to meet alive, regular patients.

How did it start? Just by chance, as many waypoints in life seem to do. I meet my old teacher in FO from my time as a student in School of Dentistry in Malmö. I was then working halftime in School of Dentistry in Stockholm, besides managing my private practice and he happened to need some assistance. So I started up with FO and I never regretted this decision. But probably you must have some special qualifications or interests to get on well with the profession. For me, this was a large interest in criminology and also an interest in Medicine and to cooperate with people from other professions. You get a lot of possibilities to develop these interests, while working in Forensic Odontology.

Did I ever felt bad during my cases, felt that I could not handle the situation? No, not seriously, as far as I can remember. The psychological most difficult cases I had was after a bus crash in Norway, most of the cases were children whose bodies were of almost normal appearance postmortem, but they died of multiple skull fractures and had to be identified without any reasonable doubt (see earlier report: Some ethical issues in working with identification of human beings.).

If you feel that you have an important mission to fulfill, I think you will suppress prospective bad feelings and stick to your task. In another mass catastrophe, an airplane crash outside Madrid, the Swedish Identification commission had an invaluable assistance by a Secretary at the Swedish Embassy. He was with us during all phases of our work and had to almost assist us in working with postmortem examinations of all injured bodies. Afterwards his wife asked us how he had acted:

-Very well, we said, we could not have had better asistance!

-I cannot understand that, she said,

-He use to feel sick even for a dead fish!

I think it will work like that for many people.

                                                                                Leif Kullman