Forensic science took a leap forward in 1889 when Professor Lacassagne of the University of Lyons was able to identify a corpse found in a sack in the river Rhône as that of a bailiff named Gouffé, who had vanished from his Paris home. Gouffé had been murdered for his money by a man named Eyraud and a prostitute named Gabrielle Bompard. They had then wrapped the body in a sack, put the sack inside a trunk, taken the trunk by train to a point near Lyons, and dumped it in the river, where the trunk broke and the body dropped out. The detective work involved was remarkable. Goron, the Chef de la Sûreté, traced the trunk from Paris to Lyons from an only partially-legible label. Lacassagne's pathological discoveries, undertaken after an autopsy had been conducted three months before by one of his pupils who had decided definitely that the body was not that of Gouffé, were more remarkable still. By measurement and comparison of the bones he established that the dead man had walked with a limp, had suffered from inflammation of one ankle and also from water on the knee. It was found that this was precisely Gouffé's condition. His height was assessed through the bones, his age through the teeth. Both corresponded to those of Gouffé. Finally the last stumbling block was overcome. The corpse had black hair, Gouffé's had been brown, but Lacassagne had already observed that hair could change colour inside a coffin. He obtained Gouffé's hairbrush, compared the hairs on it with those on the head of the dead man, and was able to say positively that the corpse was that of Gouffé.