The latex technique was found to be easy to apply while being cheap and quick, and it was helpful when treating badly charred hands and mummified or decomposed fingertips. In handling deformed skin (mummification, dehydration, or charring), the latex technique was found to offer a considerable benefit compared with Lee and Gaensslen's method. A smooth, folds-free copy of the ridge pattern was obtained in a short time, ready to put either on a shaped medium or on a slide, to be inked or photographed. The latex technique can produce the final print in one step, avoiding the loss in definition caused by Ineichen's casting procedure. The only restriction imposed by the latex technique is that the mummified or charred fingertip be previously treated with sodium hydroxide, because it prevents the rubber from vulcanizing. The preliminary step involved cleaning the fingertip with a brush soaked in ether to remove the grease from the skin. A thin layer of liquid latex was then spread on the finger using a wooden rounded rod. In order to distribute the liquid into all the introflections of the plica, researchers blew on it, paying attention not to create residues in every fold. A wrinkle-free and protrusion-free elastic film reproduced the fingertip dermatoglyphics. No longer than 10 minutes was required for the solvent present in the latex to dry, leaving behind the thin elastic semitransparent film needed. This was removed and placed over a medium fit for the fingerprint identification procedure. The two cases in which this technique was successfully used involved a mummified body and a burned corpse. 3 figures and 7 references