The principles of forensic medicine : systematically arranged, and applied to British practice / By John Gordon Smith.

  • Smith, John Gordon, 1792-1833.
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of forensic medicine : systematically arranged, and applied to British practice / By John Gordon Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    from following up the plan; but, notwithstanding the better state of preparation in which I am con- scious of being for a renewal of the attempt I am not very sangftine as to the result of the experiment. I shall not enter into any enumeration of the topics that form the details of Forensic Medicine. A glance at the accompanying Table of Contents will supersede all necessity for such an attempt. A few remarks on the arrangement are all that will now keep the reader from entering on the pro- per subjects of the work. Various indeed have been the methods resorted to by authors in arranging the details of this com- prehensive subject; and I do not know a single work that, according to my view of it, is to be ad- mired for its method of classification. This may perhaps supersede the necessity of proofs as to the difficulty. Of the voluminous writings of Fortu- natus. Fidelis, Paul Zacchias, Rodericus a Castro, Michael Albert, Valentine, and others, it is quite allowable to say that there is no arrangement what- ever. Each contains a vast quantity of matter, but whether they are read from the one end or the other, or in any other order, can signify but little. Among the modern writers, altogether the most conspicuous and accessible is Foder6, who in the last and improved edition of his Medecine Legale, has separated the subject into three grand divi- sions or parts. The first he terms Med. Leg. Mixte, which I shall not attempt to translate. In the details of this he has followed the order of the Napoleon code. The second he denominates la medecine legale criminelle, and the prefatory account of what he has made of it is rather amusing. “ I a 2