A synopsis of modern medical jurisprudence : anatomically, physiologically, and forensically illustrated : for the faculty of medicine, magistrates, lawyers, coroners, and jurymen / by J.S. Forsyth.

  • Forsyth, J. S.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A synopsis of modern medical jurisprudence : anatomically, physiologically, and forensically illustrated : for the faculty of medicine, magistrates, lawyers, coroners, and jurymen / by J.S. Forsyth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    dical profession, and summoned numerous writer^ from its ranks. It was the first regular commence- ment and origin of legal medicine, and it required only such an enactment to apprehend the utility of which it was susceptible. The kings of France soon hecame alive to the value of similar institutions. In 1556, Henry II. promul- gated a law, by virtue of which death was inflicted on the female who should conceal her pregnancy, and destroy her offspring. In 1606, Henry IV. pre- sented letters-patent to his first physician, by which he conferred on him the privilege of nominating two surgeons in every city and important town, whose duty it should exclusively be to examine all wounded or murdered persons, and to make reports thereon ; and, in 1607, Louis XIV. formally declared, that no report should be valid unless it had received the sanction of at least one of these surgeons. At a subsequent period (1692) physicians were bylaw associated with surgeons in these examinations. The writers who have investigated the science of Medical Jurisprudence are numerous, and many of them have displayed great talent and acuteness*. * It is probable that Fortanatus Fldelis was the earliest writer on Medical Jurisprudence. He was an Italian, and his work '' De Relationibus Medicorum was published at Pa- lermo in 1602. Paulus Zacchias soon followed him, in his great work, entitled Questiones Medico-legales, which ap- peared at Rome betv,^een 1621 and 1635. This distinguished man rose to great eminence in his profession, and was physician to Pope Innocent the Tenth. He died in 1659, in the seventy- fifth year of his age. His treatise on legal medicine, although tainted with the superstition of the age in which he lived, is