Steve Calvert's
"History of Semen
Detections"

Mathieu Bonaventure Orfila
(1787-1853)
Professor of medicinal
and forensic chemistry at Univ. of
Paris, Considered the father of modern
toxicology. Credited as the first to
attempt the use of a microscope in the
assessment of semen stains in 1813.
Orfila published Traité des poisons
tirés des règnes minéral, végétal et
animal, ou Toxicologie générale Paris,
chez Crochard, 1818.
HL Bayard, "Forensics in
a jury trial" published the first
reliable procedures for the microscopic
detection of sperm in 1839
A. Florence of Lyons
develops use of reagent "teriodide of
potassium" creating a crystalline
reaction for semen in 1896.
Dr. W.F. Whitney of
Boston MA develops the method of fixing
and staining semen (currently referred
to as "Christmas Tree Stain") for
microscopic inspection for spermatozoa
in 1897.
Frank Lundquist, working
at the Legal Medicine Unit at the
University of Copenhagen, developed the
acid phosphatase test for semen in
1945.
Claude B. Hazen
published Measurement of Acid
Phosphatase Activity to Identify Seminal
Stains The Journal of Criminal Law,
Criminology, and Police Science, Vol.
46, No. 3 pp. 408-413 in 1955.
M. Hara et al. first
described a protein in the seminal fluid
named gammaseminoprotein in 1971.
Gammaseminoprotein was
characterized in detail by Sensabaugh et
al. who found that its molecular weight
corresponds to 30,000 Dalton and thus
named it p30 in 1978.
P30 was called Prostate
Specific Antigen (PSA) and first
purified by Wang et al. in 1979.
DNA Testing Centre Inc (DTC)
offered online purchases of laboratory
semen detections in 2000.
DTC developed an
in-house laboratory procedure for a 3
part semen detection including Prostate
Specific Antigen (PSA), microscopic
inspection , and the Acid Phosphatase
(AP) test in 2002.
DTC developed and sold
the first non-presumptive home semen
detection test in 2003.
Semen and Sperm
Detection Inc (SSDI) was formed as a
corporation dedicated to developing and
performing semen detection tests in
2005. |