A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers.

Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    accomplices were sentenced to terras of 14 and 7 years' imprisonment. He adds, A consideration of the facilities of escape offered to crime by too rigidly insisting on identification will, therefore, cause some relaxation of this rule. This is no fault of the legislature or of the bench, but an unfortunate consequence of the circumstances peculiar to this country. If a mass of bones can pass in an English court of law, we see no reason why a tuft of red hair should not be accepted in Bengal. The irrevocable sentence of death need not be pronounced, but, when direct evidence and a mass of concurrent circumstances render us virtually certain of a man's guilt, it is mere weakness to let him go wholly unpunished, because the proof is incomplete. What earthly investigation can be complete ? Some men can be made to doubt their own senses ; and we know that, in this country, a bullying counsel force a native witness to admit any- thing. We must try, therefore, to administer justice with the means at our disposal, and not attempt to attain an unattainable perfection. I remarked, in 1856, that an accurate comparison of the Skulls of the various races inhabiting India is a great desideratum in ethnology, and would prove a considerable aid to medico-legal inquiry. The small compact cranium of the Bengalee—good if there were but enough of it;—the spreading retreating forehead and projecting malar bones of the Chuckma, Mugh, Burman, and Chinese, each receding from the Caucasian and approaching the Mongolian type nearly in the above order ; the nobly Caucasian heads of the educated Brahmin and the Rajpoot ; and the high, ovoid, and essentially Jewish cranium of the .Affghau,—all present dis- tinctive peculiarities which, thoroughly studied, would afford many valuable clues to identity. During the fourteen years which have elapsed since the above remark was recorded, great advances have been made in our knowledge of the com- parative forms of the skulls of the various races of men, especially by Dr. Barnard Davis, the learned author of the Thesaurus Craniorum. Still, apart from the fact that a complete collection of skulls represent- ing the various races which inhabit India has never yet been made, a small and handy work displaying the forms, and giving the measurements of those skulls (authenticated as being of pure race), which have already beeu catalogued, is much needed for use in India. It will frequently happen that the medical officer's opinion will be required upon Skeletons or detached Bones. The smallness and delicate formation of the skeleton of the Bengalee may often lead to considerable doubt regarding the age and sex of the deceased, unless the pelvis or a femur be produced.* * The following case (N. A. R., Vol. VI., of 1856, p. 990) illustrates very forcibly the neces- sity of minute accuracy in conducting these investigations. It also shows how little import- ance is attached, in India, to the production of probable bones. In a trial at Backergungc the Sessions Judge observed:—On the31st of December 1855, the prisoner, Boodbagi, denied