Volume 1

The principles and practice of medical jurisprudence / by the late Alfred Swaine Taylor.

  • Taylor, Alfred Swaine, 1806-1880.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The principles and practice of medical jurisprudence / by the late Alfred Swaine Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    effects of poison, the quantity of each required to destroy life, and the time within which a poison may prove fatal. It may be objected to his evidence that the deceased had died from the effects of disease, and not from poison, in which case the examination will lead to a searching inquiry into all those diseases which resemble poisoning in their symptoms and post-mortem appearances, as well as the means of making a certain distinction between them, and the fallacies to which the chemical processes for the detection of poison are liable. He will inevitably be asked if any traces of disease were present in any organ, and hence, as above illustrated, the importance of making an examination complete in all details. On another occasion a medical man may be called to render assistance to one who has been stabbed in a quarrel, and who speedily dies from the wound. The office of the surgeon here ceases, while that of the medical jurist commences. He must now be prepared to answer numerous questions, all bearing upon the legal proof of crime, all necessary in law, although apparently superfluous in surgery. Thus he may be asked to state the precise characters of a wound inflicted upon the body of a man soon after death, and by what means a particular wound was inflicted. Was it homicidal or accidental? The amount of blood lost? Whether the person could have moved or performed any act after receiving it ? Are certain stains found upon his clothes, or upon a knife belonging to him owing to effused blood or other causes ? Whether any, and what, statements were made by the dying man, and what were the precise circumstances under which they were made? It need hardly be observed that questions of this nature are rarely noticed, except in a cursory manner, by professors of chemistry and surgery, and a medical man is not likely to acquire the means of answering them by intuition. On the other hand, regarding ourselves as living in a civilised state, in which the detection and punishment of crimes against life and property are indispensable to the security of all, it is impossible to overrate their importance. Unless a witness is able to return answers to these questions when a public necessity occurs, a guilty man may escape punishment, or an innocent man may be condemned. He may thus most seriously injure his own reputation ; for it is certain that his qualifications as a physician, surgeon, or general practitioner, however great, will not shield him from the reproach of having caused a failure of justice. Again, the dead body of an infant is, to a healer of the sick, a corpse, and nothing more; he is too late to be of use; but to the medical jurist it is a human sphinx from which he is expected to extract answers to many questions : Was it mature or immature ? Could it have been, and was it, born alive? If so, how long did it live? Was it killed, and if so, how? Or did it die a natural death ? if so, why ? On the answers to these questions may hang the life of a fellow-creature, or at least the honour of a sister. Thus, then, it is obvious that the duties of a medical jurist are of a highly responsible nature and of great importance to society, while the cases which call them into exercise are of purely accidental occurrence. A medical practitioner who thinks himself secure in the most retired corner of the kingdom is liable to find himself suddenly summoned as a witness on a trial, to answer questions which perhaps