PART II.
Medical Jurisprudence.
PART II.
Introduction—1. Of Medical Evidence generally—2. Of Marriage and Divorce—Various Questions connected with the foregoing subjects elucidated by Physiological Researches—3. Of Legitimacy—Suppositious Children—Tenant by the Courtesy—Monsters—Hermaphrodites—Physiological Illustrations—4. Of Idiots and Lunatics—Medical and Physiological Illustrations—5. Of Nuisances, legally, medically, and chemically considered—6. Of Impositions—7. Of Life Insurance and Survivorship.
INTRODUCTION.
Having thus considered, as far as the limits of our work will allow, the Charters, Statutes, Laws and Privileges which regulate the several Public and Corporate Bodies instituted for securing the more regular practice of Medicine[[229]] in all its branches: and having commented also on the Rights, Immunities, and Liabilities, to which Medical Practitioners are entitled, or subjected, in their several individual capacities, and enumerated the prominent subjects relating to public health, it now remains for us to enter into the discussion of the most important branch of our subject; the most important because, though questions affecting corporate or individual privileges may be and occasionally are of great interest to the public, yet the general administration of justice, as affecting all classes of men in the enjoyment of their natural and acquired rights, stands on higher ground, and demands the best attention of all those who either as principals or assistants; who as judges, advocates, witnesses, or even spectators, are concerned in its due execution. For this reason, we are about to draw the attention of Medical practitioners to the nature and importance of the evidence, which they may be required to give in Courts of Law, on various subjects in which their science is not merely ancillary, but in the highest degree essential to the ends of justice. Nor are these subjects limited, as might at a first and superficial view appear, to the testimony required of physicians and surgeons in criminal cases, but extends in a greater or less degree through every branch of jurisprudence; nor can we yet assert that we have anticipated every point on which medical, chemical, and surgical questions may arise; as recent examples have evinced, that the rapid progress of science which has marked the last half century above all others, is daily eliciting new points both for scientific and judicial enquiry. We must therefore for the present content ourselves with following that arrangement of our subject which is afforded by a natural and immutable scale,—the life and propagation of the human species, from its commencement to its close:—prefacing the subject with some short remarks on the nature of evidence; not indeed as a legal guide to the medical witness, but to point out to him the sources of higher and more general information.
OF MEDICAL EVIDENCE GENERALLY.
As Physicians, Surgeons, and others conversant in medicine and chemistry, are constantly called upon to give testimony in Courts of Justice, it is necessary for us to enter upon this subject of the law of evidence, so far as it immediately affects the medical witness; it is proper that he should understand when he is bound to appear, and on what terms, and it may be useful for him to be prepared, by some previous knowledge of the usual course of examination, for the difficulties and objections which may arise in the progress of it. A scientific witness, fully acquainted with the subject in dispute, and by his particular knowledge well qualified to inform the Court on the most important points, is too frequently rendered miserable in himself, and absolutely ineffective to the ends of justice, by the diffidence which a man of real acquirement generally feels, when impressed at once with the novelty of his situation, a sense of the importance of the duty which he is about to perform, and a consciousness that the truths which he is about to utter, may be obscured, suppressed, or perverted, by technicalities for which he is unprepared with any defence; we do not mean to arraign the present forms of examination in general, when we assert that some abuse in practice too frequently places the witness in as painful a situation, as if he were himself a criminal.