The Learned Professor
This is the image of pathologist that your average surgeon will have - leather and corduroy-bound men reading dusty tomes in gloomy libraries, stroking their beards and sucking on their pipes before dispensing their judgement on a problem. They know nothing about the practical matter of actually dealing with patients, and always give their advice far too late - generally when the individual concerned has died...
Big Knives and Plastic Gowns
Plastic aprons and big knives! This is more like it! According to most television programmes, pathologists wear blood-splattered theatre greens, wellies and rubber gloves at all times. They only perform autopsies at midnight, with a single lightbulb for illumination, a microphone on a ceiling wire to dictate into and a line of anxious policemen, the youngest of which will either be sick or faint at some point.
Strange Snacks
Their bizarre dietary predilections are well-known, too - a pathologist will think nothing of breaking off half way through an autopsy to bite a sandwich, which is then perched on the edge of a body cavity...
Investigating Crimes
Of course, when pathologists are not in the mortuary, they are busy solving crimes (I suppose they have to do something during daylight hours...).
Questioning Suspects
Questioning suspects is, naturally, unthinkable without a suitably qualified pathologist in attendance...
Riding Motorcycles
With so many vital jobs to perform, a motor cycle or high performance car is a must to get you from hospital to murder scene to police station (generally via some picturesque countryside).
Fighting Villains
A good pathologist pathologist needs to be handy with his fists, just in case he has to personally bring some shifty foreigner to justice. Fire escapes are the ideal location for this.
Sleeping with Suspects
And finally, it is vital that in every murder investigation the pathologist sleeps with the prime suspect. Failing that, they should sleep with the victim themselves - but, I hasten to add, before the murder occurs...