A manual of medical jurisprudence / by Alfred Swaine Taylor.

  • Taylor, Alfred Swaine, 1806-1880.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence / by Alfred Swaine Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    710/872 (page 698)
    Sometimes, owing to the violence used, the parts are much lace- rated ; and inflammation, followed by sloughing or mortification, may set in and destroy life, especially in children of an unhealthj'- habit. Care should be taken that the symptoms of a malignant form of disease {noma), to which female children when in a dirty or neglected state are liable, are not mistaken for the results of criminal violence. Some such cases are reported, from which it would appear that men have narrowly escaped conviction for a crime which had really not been perpetrated. Percival ('Med. Ethics,' 3rd edit., 1849, p. 117) relates a case which has been the subject of frequent quotation and comment in reference to false charges of rape. A girl, set. 4, was admitted into the Manchester Infirmary in 1791, on account of a mortification of the female organs and general depression of strength. She had been in bed with a boy fourteen years old, and it was supposed that he had taken criminal liberties with her. The mortification in- creased, and the child died. The boy was tried on a charge of rape, but acquitted on evidence being adduced that several instances of a similar disease had appeared among girls about the same period of time, in which there was no reason to suspect injury or guilt. In one of these cases there was typhus fever, with a mortification of the genitals. There was no cause of death discoverable on inspection; the lumbar glands were of a dark colour, but all the viscera were sound. This case, with the whole of Kinder Wood's paper on the subject, has been republished by Kesteven. (' Med. Times and Gaz.,' 1859, i. p. 443.) A case of this disease (^noma pudendi), but in which no charge of rape was made, was referred to the author in 1865. E. A. R., a girl, set. 5, died suddenly under circumstances which led to a suspicion that poison had been administered to her. There was congestion of the lining membrane of the stomach, but no poison was found in the body, and there was no trace of the action of poison. When the body was inspected, the genitals externally and the skin around and beyond the anus were intensely inflamed, swollen, and ulcerated, and in an approaching state of gangrene or slough. The hymen at the entrance was ruptured, and the lining membrane of the vagina and womb was highly inflamed—of a dark purple colour, with softening and disorganization of substance. The inguinal glands were enlarged on both sides. The child was in a neglected and dirty state, and died from exhaustion produced by the disease and want of proper food and support. The deceased was seen by a medical man shortly before her death, and the state of the genitals was only dis- covered by accident, the mother having made no observation about it. When questioned on the subject, she said the girl had been blown down about a fortnight before, and had injured herself by falhng on some thorns. This was quite inadequate to account for the condition of the parts. There was no doubt that this was a case of noma rendered fatal by neglect in an unhealthy child. Had any man been seen noticing this child, a charge of rape might easily have been founded upon the state of the genital organs. On the other hand, fatal injury may be done to these organs in