General Considerations [excerpt]

     When portions of the body are desired for preservation or for future study, permission to remove them should be obtained from some one connected with the household, though not necessarily from the nearest relative, as in gaining consent for the performance of the autopsy. It is, of course, unnecessary to tell how much of the body is to be taken away! Should, however, the person authorizing the autopsy forbid the removal of any portion of the body from the house, no specimens should be secured. Consent can nearly always be obtained for the removal of small pieces of tissue for microscopic purposes, even in those cases in which permission to take away larger specimens is refused. Thus, in the postmortem on President McKinley, the bullet causing the fatal wound was not found, owing to [5][6] Mrs. McKinley objecting—though without legal right so to do—to the search being longer continued, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that permission was obtained to remove portions of the body for microscopic study.