I was talking recently about the famous autopsy of Charles II and checked the internet to find the full text, but couldn’t find it. And the more I looked, the more I started noticing the telltale signs of apocrypha: it makes for a great fun fact, most people use almost the exact same wording for things, and the few people who are citing sources seem to be citing just a few papers written very recently (relative to the actual event). But while I couldn’t find primary sources for the autopsy, I also couldn’t find people talking about how the story isn’t actually true and it was made up.

So I suspect that this story is made up, but I don’t have any guidance for that from people who actually study history. Thus, my problem: my process for finding primary sources is usually to find experts who know how to find them, and checking their sources. But that obviously can’t help me here. I want to be able to say one way or the other that this autopsy report is real or fake, but I don’t have any clue how to check that for myself. I recognize that my question kind of boils down to “how do you do research,” but I was hoping I could get some kind of guidance.