A medico-legal treatise on malpractice and medical evidence : comprising the elements of medical jurisprudence / by John J. Elwell.

  • Elwell, John J.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A medico-legal treatise on malpractice and medical evidence : comprising the elements of medical jurisprudence / by John J. Elwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    MALPEACTICE AND MEDICAL EVIDENCE. INTRODUCTION. THE GENERAL PLAN AND SCOPE OF THE WORK. Frequent, important, and troublesome as are the cases of alleged Malpractice by medical men, there is yet no work treat- ing upon the subject, and medical and legal inquirers after inform- ation upon the question, are obliged to seek it in the vast range of elementary works upon Medicine and Law, and in the unlimited field of Reports, constituting the larger part of every lawyer's library. The author trusts that in the first part of this work he has supplied this desideratum,—at least, to a considerable extent. Happily, Criminal Malpractice is but rarely met with in courts of justice; while Civil suits for damages are of a frequency, alarming, both to the profession of medicine and to the public. Suits of this class, in some parts of the country, seem to be on the increase. So common an occurrence is it for the surgical treatment of the oldest and best physicians and surgeons, in general practice, to be called in question and overhauled in courts of justice, that there is at this time a general feeling of uneasiness, and a conviction that the business is at best very dangerous, so far as property and reputation are concerned. The result is, that some of the most thoroughly qualified medical men, utterly refuse to attend surgical cases,—confining their practice to