The great work of Paulus Zacchias, physician to Pope Innocent X., was first printed at Rome, 1621-35. This medico-legal classic contains in the first two volumes the “Quæstiones” and in the third the decisions of the Roman Rota. It treats of every branch of medico-legal science, and discusses physiological questions of legal interest, besides dealing with questions such as the infliction of torture and miracles.[51]
Although the “Quæstiones Medico-legales” of Zacchias was the first systematic work upon medical jurisprudence, his countrymen in succeeding centuries have contributed but little to this science. It is only during the latter part of the present century that Italians have again become prominent in medico-legal literature.
In France legal medicine progressed but little from the time of Paré to the latter part of the eighteenth century. Several treatises appeared, being chiefly upon legitimacy and kindred subjects,[52] with a few treating of reports, signs of death, etc.[53]
Toward the end of the eighteenth century the labors of Louis, Petit, Chaussier, and Fodéré elevated legal medicine to the rank of a science. The investigations of Louis (Ant. L.) were numerous and important in this as in other subjects,[54] and the “causes célébres” contain reports of many trials in which he threw light upon doubtful medical questions.[55] Antoine Petit, a contemporary of Louis, contributed an extensive work on the duration of pregnancy as affecting legitimacy.[56]
Somewhat later Fr. B. Chaussier, between 1785 and 1828, published at Dijon a number of treatises on infanticide, viability, surgical malpractice, etc.[57] Fodéré, a Savoyard, was the first to publish a systematic treatise on medical jurisprudence in France, which was first printed in 1798 and in a much enlarged form in 1813.[58] This last edition is an exhaustive treatise upon all branches of legal medicine and public hygiene, and won for its author the appointment as Professor of Forensic Medicine in the University of Strassburg.
At about the same period appeared the works of Mahon[59] and of Belloc,[60] both of which went through three editions in ten years, and those of Biessy.[61]
The most industrious and original of French professors of legal medicine was Orfila. A native of Minorca, he graduated in medicine at Paris in 1811, and devoting himself to chemical and toxicological investigations, published the first edition of his “Traité des Poisons” in 1814. This work, which may be regarded as the foundation of experimental and forensic toxicology, went through five editions to 1852, and was translated into several foreign languages. The first edition of his “Leçons de Médecine légale” appeared in 1821, and the fourth in 1848. Besides these Orfila published a work on the treatment of asphyxia and a great number of papers on medico-legal subjects, principally in the Annales d’Hygiène, of which he was one of the founders with Andral, Esquirol, Leuret, and Devergie. Orfila occupied the chair of chemistry and medical jurisprudence in the University of Paris for upward of thirty years, and was employed as expert in innumerable cases before the courts.
Contemporaneous with Orfila, and almost as prominent, was Devergie, the first edition of whose “Médecine légale,” in three volumes, appeared in 1836, and the third in 1852.
In 1820 the first edition of the Manual of Briand and Brosson was published. This work, the tenth edition of which was published in 1879, is the first in which a jurist was associated with a physician in the authorship,[62] and is one of five of which one of the authors is a lawyer.[63]