DR J C OLMSTEAD, Sworn In For The Defendant, 118th To Testify

Dr. J. C. Olmstead, 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. J. C. Olmstead, a 36-year practicing physician, delivered a point-by-point demolition of the State’s entire medical case.
1. Head Wound

A 1½-inch laceration to the skull with no fracture and no brain injury is medically meaningless 9–10 days after death.
Impossible to say whether the blow caused unconsciousness, occurred before, during, or shortly after death, or was post-mortem.
“Pure guesswork” to claim otherwise.

2. Black Eye

Discoloration around the eye cannot be timed—identical whether inflicted before or after death.

3. Cabbage Digestion

No physician alive can time cabbage from appearance, acid levels, or chemistry 9–10 days post-mortem.
Hydrochloric acid and pepsin vanish after death; embalming fluid destroys pancreatic juice.
Bolted, poorly chewed cabbage (State’s Exhibit G) can obstruct the pylorus and languish undigested for 10–12 hours in a living stomach—let alone a dead one.
Standard tables (bread 2½ hrs, cabbage 4½ hrs) are averages; real stomachs vary wildly.
Olmstead: “Food of that character might remain in the stomach undigested for 10 or 12 hours irrespective of the acid found there.”

4. Vaginal “Violence”

Digital exam on a fresh corpse rips epithelium; 9 days of decomposition + 8% formaldehyde obliterates all evidence.
Menstrual congestion, post-mortem blood pooling, and strangulation produce identical vascular distension.
No microscope can distinguish pre-death rape from natural causes or iatrogenic trauma.
“Utterly unreliable” to claim violence 5–15 minutes before death.

Cross-Examination
Olmstead refused every trap:

Tables are averages; real digestion is individual.
Bolted cabbage recovered 30–50 minutes after eating in the living looks no different from Exhibit G 10 days after death.
No expert can time death from cabbage + acid—full stop.

Verdict
Olmstead annihilated the State’s one-hour murder window, turned the vaginal “rape” evidence into medical garbage, and reopened the entire timeline. He left the prosecution’s forensic case in ashes, declaring every definitive claim “impossible,” “guesswork,” or “utterly unreliable