Editor,—I read with interest the recent paper by Glasgow and McGovern which suggested that bruising with a yellow hue suggests that injury occurred at least 48 hours earlier.1Unfortunately, this statement is not referenced. However, I am aware of three papers on the age and colour of bruising.2-4

Langlois and Gresham4 studied the colour changes of bruises with time and found it was possible to conclude only that a bruise with a yellow colour was more than 18 hours old. The significance of the appearance of other colours in terms of estimating the time of …