DR THOMAS HANCOCK, Sworn In For The Defendant, 116th To Testify

Dr. Thomas Hancock, 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. Thomas Hancock, 22-year surgeon and hospital veteran of 14,000 cases, examined Leo Frank and declared him sexually normal. He demolished the State’s medical timeline in a single, ruthless stroke.
Head Wound: a 1½-inch cut to the skull with no fracture, no brain pressure, and one drop of blood is medically meaningless 9–10 days after burial. Impossible to say if it caused unconsciousness, was struck before, during, or hours after death, or came from any direction. “Pure guesswork.”
Black Eye: post-mortem blows produce identical bruising while blood remains fluid—up to 12 hours.
Cabbage Digestion: no physician can time cabbage from appearance, acid, or chemistry 9–10 days post-mortem. Hydrochloric acid follows no fixed curve; free HCl may be delayed for hours. Embalming fluid destroys pepsin and pancreatic juice; acidity proves nothing. Bolted cabbage (State’s Exhibit G) can languish 10–12 hours in a living stomach—indefinitely in a dead one. Fear, anger, or exertion can halt digestion for hours. Hancock: “Each stomach is a law unto itself.”
Live Experiments: Hancock vomited five normal stomachs after feeding bread + cabbage:

60 min → chocolate tint, well-chewed
45 min → almost unchanged
75 min → no digestion
30–45 min → tomato traces
2 hr 28 min → recognizable cabbage

State’s Exhibit G looked less digested than 12-hour living samples.
Vaginal “Violence”: digital exam on a fresh corpse rips epithelium; 9 days + 8% formaldehyde obliterates evidence. Menstruation, strangulation, and post-mortem pooling produce identical congestion. No microscope can distinguish pre-death assault from natural causes. “Certainly no violence.”
Cause of Death: lividity, protruding tongue, cord furrow, cyanosis = strangulation, not the head blow.
Blood Trail: a skull-piercing wound bleeds profusely; 30–40 minutes in one spot would leave pools. Dragging 40 feet would streak blood—none was found.
Cross-examination failed. Hancock refused every trap:

Sexual inverts can appear normal (irrelevant).
Strangulation explains all pelvic findings.
Menstruation produces reddening and swelling; violence is not required.
No expert can time cabbage—“Doctors do not know.”

Hancock annihilated the State’s one-hour timeline, turned the vaginal “rape” evidence into medical garbage, and reopened the entire crime scene. With live vomit jars on the stand, he visually proved the State’s digestion claim was “one of the greatest absurdities of the day.”