Medical knowledge among the Hindoos was further advanced than among the Egyptians. In the Rig Veda (about 1500 B.C.) occur a few medical references, among which is the statement that the duration of pregnancy is ten (lunar) months.
The earliest purely medical Sanskrit texts are the Ayur Vedas of Châraka and Sûsruta, which were probably written about 600 B.C., but which are undoubtedly compilations of information which had been handed down during many centuries before that time. In each of these is a section devoted to poisons and their antidotes (Kalpa), in which it is written that a knowledge of poisons and antidotes is necessary to the physician “because the enemies of the Rajah, bad women, and ungrateful servants sometimes mix poison with the food.” Full directions are also given for the recognition of a person who gives poison, and to differentiate the poisons themselves, whose number, from all the kingdoms of nature, is legion. The age at which women may marry is fixed at twelve years, while men may not marry before twenty-five. The duration of pregnancy is given as between nine and twelve lunar months, the average being ten. The practice of medicine is restricted to certain castes, and requires the sanction of the Rajah, and the method of education of medical students is prescribed.[6]
It is singular that the Greeks were apparently destitute of any knowledge of legal medicine. Although medicine and jurisprudence were highly developed among them, allusions to any connection between the two are of very rare occurrence and uncertain.
The Hippocratic writings (ca. 420 B.C.) contain many facts which are of medico-legal interest: the possibility of superfœtation was recognized;[7] the average duration of pregnancy was known, and the viability of children born before term was discussed,[8] the relative fatality of wounds affecting different parts of the body was considered,[9] and the Hippocratic oath makes the physician swear that he “will not administer or advise the use of poison, nor contribute to an abortion.” The position of the physician in Greek communities was an exalted one. No slave or woman might be taught medicine,[10] although later free-born women were permitted to practise in their native places. Homer also refers to physicians as men of learning and of distinction.[11] The Greek physician was therefore in a position, both from his information and from his standing in the community, to aid in the administration of justice.
The Greeks were also extremely litigious and possessed a code of criminal procedure which was elaborate, and in many respects resembled those now in use in England and the United States.[12] The writings of the Greek orators, Demosthenes, Æschines, Lysias, Antiphon, Isocrates, etc., which have come down to us substantiate the claim of Ælian that “to Athens mankind is indebted for the olive, the fig, and the administration of justice.”[13]
The writings of the Greek physicians contain no reference to any legal application of their knowledge, and certain passages in the writings of the orators seem to indicate that, while a physician was called to inspect and treat a wounded person, the testimony as to the patient’s condition was given in court by others.
Thus in the case against Euergos and Mnesibulus, in which an old woman had died some days after an assault, Demosthenes[14] states that he notified the accused to bring a surgeon and cure the woman; but that as they did not do so, he himself brought his own surgeon and showed him her condition in the presence of witnesses. Upon hearing from the surgeon that the woman was in a hopeless condition, he again explained her state to the accused and required them to find medical aid. Finally, on the sixth day after the assault the woman died. He further asserts that these statements would be proved by the depositions.[15]
The third Tetralogy of Antiphon[16] (B.C. 480) relates to a case in which the defence was essentially the same as that which was the subject of a vast amount of medical expert testimony in a celebrated trial for murder in New York not many years ago. A person wounds another, who dies some days afterward. The assailant is accused of murder and sets up the defence that the deceased perished, not from the wounds inflicted, but in consequence of unskilful treatment by the physicians.
In neither of these cases is any mention made of physicians having been called upon for testimony; indeed, the statements would lead to the inference that they were not. In another case in which a poor and sick citizen is accused of malingering to obtain the customary pecuniary aid from the State, Lysias[17] summons no medical evidence but relies entirely upon a statement of his client’s case.[18]