The burden of shewing that the use of instruments to produce abortion was necessary to save the life of the woman is on the accused ([404]).
It is an indictable offence for a physician, or any one else, unlawfully and injuriously to carry along or to expose in a public highway, on which persons are passing, and near to the habitations of others, any person infected with the small-pox, or any contagious disorder; and it is for the accused to shew that the object of the carrying or exposure was lawful ([405]).
In England, since 1840, it has been an indictable offence to innoculate for the small-pox ([406]). So, too, it has been in Canada for a number of years ([407]). |148|
It has been held in the State of Alabama, that where a special prohibitory Act does not except the practising physician from its operation, he is liable if he administers intoxicating bitters to his patient, but not for using liquors necessary in compounding medicine manufactured and sold by him. The application of any other rule, it was said by the Court, would be fraught with difficulty, if not impracticability. So, too, in Kansas ([408]).
Any registered practitioner who has been convicted of felony shall forfeit his right to registration, and the Medical Council may cause his name to be erased from the register; and if any one who has been convicted of felony presents himself for registration the registrar may refuse registration. But one’s name cannot legally be removed from the register without notice and an opportunity of being heard ([409]).
A person who has met with personal injuries must exercise the same degree of care in the employment of a physician and surgeon, and in procuring and submitting to proper medical treatment, as a prudent and reasonable man would in any other matter; for those persons liable for the original injury will not be responsible for the further damage arising from the improper selection of a physician ([410]).
If a family doctor, or the surgeon of a company or society, on leaving home, recommends in case of need, some other physician, who is not, however, in any sense in his employment, it does not make him in any way liable for injuries arising from the latter’s want of skill ([411]).
CHAPTER XII. DISSECTION AND RESURRECTION.
A knowledge of the causes and nature of sundry diseases which affect the human body, and of the best methods of treating and curing such diseases, and of healing and repairing divers wounds and injuries to which the human frame is liable, cannot be acquired without the aid of anatomical examination. So saith the preamble to the British Anatomy Act of 1832. The chief hindrances to the pursuit of the study of anatomy have arisen from ignorance and superstition. A prejudice has prevailed in all nations against the violation of the human body after death. Even now, only philosophers like Jeremy Bentham are willing to have their bodies dissected by their friends. Simple association of thoughts causes the remains of a dead kinsman or friend to be treated with respect and tenderness; in the same way, the horror of death attaching to anything connected with the dead, and the religious idea that the soul outlives the body, and continues in a ghostly way to retain a connection with its old habitation of clay, have led to the respectful disposal of the corpse among most nations.
The Ptolemy princes Philadelphus and Euergetes, who enabled their physicians to dissect the human body, and prevented the prejudices of ignorance and superstition from compromising the welfare of the human race, were far in advance of their times. Long after their day, the Koran denounced as unclean the person who touched a corpse, and |150| the rules of Islamism still forbid dissection; the old Moslem doctors only found opportunities of studying the bones of the human body in the cemeteries. Not until the days of Henry VIII. did the law make any provision for the cultivation and practice of the art of dissection. In 1540, more perhaps to strike terror into malefactors, than from any enlightened notion of forwarding knowledge, the Legislature gave permission to the masters of the Mystery of Barbers and Surgeons of London to take annually four persons, put to death for felony, for anatomies, and to make incision of the same dead bodies, or otherwise to order the same, after their discretions, at their pleasure, for their further insight and better knowledge, instruction, insight, learning, and experience, in the science or faculty of surgery ([412]).