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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    medicine, and equally entitled to its own method of distribution. The classification of Chemistry will not answer for Anatomy ; and Pathology cannot be conveniently constructed upon the basis of either of these, or of any other particular branch. It is at least the same with Forensic Physics—they require to be arranged in whatever way may promise greatest facility for study, reference, and practical application. Let us see what can be said, on this ground, in favour of my own method. In a work embracing all the three departments that belong to State or Political Medicine, Juris- prudence, as connected with the medical profession, or with the sciences, if any such connection there be, should perhaps come first; as it may be sup- posed to treat of what constitutes a professional man, and under what circumstances he is to exercise his duties, according to law. Of this, however, in Great Britain it has already been said that there is room to question the real distinction. Whether Medical Police, which is the application of medical knowledge to the benefit of man in the social state, or Justiciary Medicine, which comprises the elucidation of interference with the welfare of the individual in an unlawful manner, should follow next, I hold to be of little consequence. But this I would state, that neither should be sacrificed to the other, and that where both cannot receive equal consideration, it is better to treat of one only. Cases of the one sort may sometimes be the more urgent, and sometimes those of the other. In general, the Forensic or Justi- ciary questions press with more immediate force ; but the affairs of Hygiene may be of very great and consequential magnitude; for while, on the one hand, the conservation of the individual must pro-