Quotes from Richard Shepherd

The meeting introduced me- or, perhaps no introduction was necessary- to the awful collision between the silent, unfeeling dead and immensity of feeling they generate in the living. I left the room with relief, making a mental note to avoid the bereaved at all costs and stick to the safe world inhabited by the dead, with its facts, its measurements, its certainties. In their universe, there was a complete absence of emotion. Not to mention its ugly sister, pain.

I'm sorry to tell you that the purity of scientific truth rarely cuts through contemporary social attitudes.

It is caused, in its entirety, by a lifetime of bearing first-hand witness to, on behalf of everyone – courts, relatives, public, society – man's inhumanity to man. The result of this diagnosis? The summer of 2016 off work. Two cures: talking and pharmaceutical. And this book.

Truth is based upon knowledge. So, of course, it can be compromised by incomplete knowledge. As a doctor I sought truth through facts. As a pathologist I was now learning that truth could be directly affected by choices I made, by how many facts I chose to study.

In forensic medicine it is amazing how often you find just one exceptional exception. Followed always by a defense barrister trying to make it sound commonplace

In forensic medicine it is amazing how often you find just one exceptional exception. Followed always by a defence barrister trying to make it sound commonplace.)