DR W S KENDRICK, Sworn In For The Defendant, 119th To Testify

Dr. W. S. Kendrick, witness for the Defendant in rebuttal, at the Trial of Leo Frank in the Fulton County Superior Court of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1913 (Testimony Portion From July 28 - August 21, 1913; Closing Arguments August 21-25, 1913)
Dr. Willis S. Kendrick, former Dean of the Atlanta Medical College, 35-year practicing physician, and the man who first hired Dr. H. F. Harris, delivered a devastating medical rebuttal that demolished every forensic pillar of the State’s case.
1. Vaginal “Violence”

Nine days after burial, any digital exam would strip the fragile epithelium.
Menstrual congestion and post-mortem decomposition produce identical microscopic findings.
No pathologist could distinguish pre-death assault from natural or iatrogenic changes.
Kendrick called the State’s claim of proven rape “pure conjecture.”

2. Head Wound

A 2¼-inch scalp laceration with one drop of blood and no brain pressure is medically meaningless nine days later.
Unconsciousness cannot be proven or timed—“pure guesswork.”
Fractured skulls often leave victims fully conscious.

3. Cabbage Timeline

Every stomach is a law unto itself.
Cooked cabbage is the most indigestible carbohydrate.
Swallowed nearly whole (as in State’s Exhibit G), it receives zero salivary digestion.
Gastric juice neutralizes saliva instantly; no further starch breakdown occurs until the small intestine—never before 4½ hours.
Fear, anger, or physical struggle completely arrests digestion for hours.
32 degrees combined HCl, zero free HCl, empty duodenum, and undigested starch prove nothing about timing.
Kendrick: “No expert living could say how long that cabbage was in the stomach.”
He had personally pumped stomachs and recovered less-digested cabbage after 12 hours.

4. Post-Mortem Preservation

Embalming fluid and gastric acid act as preservatives; decomposition is irrelevant.
Ten days after death, no honest physician can time digestion, violence, or unconsciousness.

Cross-Examination
Kendrick refused every trap:

Free HCl appears only after prolonged digestion—its absence means nothing.
One personal experiment (12-hour cabbage recovery) outweighed the State’s untested theories.
Normal stomachs vary; no rigid 60-minute rule exists.
Excitement can halt digestion for 6–8 hours.

Re-Direct
Kendrick held up State’s Exhibit G:

“That cabbage has not been chewed at all.”
Swallowed whole, it would be “hard to digest” and could remain virtually unchanged for half a day.

Verdict
Kendrick’s testimony shattered the State’s one-hour murder window, rendered the vaginal “rape” evidence worthless, and reopened the entire timeline. He turned the prosecution’s star medical testimony into “one of the greatest absurdities of the day.”