Právo a medicína ve vztahu k mrtvým tělům (sebevrahů) na přelomu 18. a 19. století

This study is based on change of attitude of the state and medicine authorities to the voluntary death in the first half of the 19th century. Cooperation between medical professionals and state authorities in the Habsburg monarchy was increasing (for this process I use the concept of medicalization). I try to show how the legal system cooperated with expert medical science and consequently how the results of autopsies influenced the burial place for the body. Forensic medicine approaches were used to determine the cause of a suicide. Pathological findings (for example bone abrasions — especially in the brain, sedimentation in the skull, too much blood in various organs, adhesions etc.) were considered to be the cause of mental illness and as a result, the authorities tended to blame self-inflicted death on insanity. Based on findings from pathological examinations the state authorities decreed that a death body must be buried in sacred ground. Finally, I want to show this ‘shift’ to medicalization and secularisation of voluntary death (in opposition to the traditional attitude toward self-murder) on several specific cases in regions of Litoměřice and Mladá Boleslav in the Kingdom of Bohemia.