Principles of forensic medicine / by William A. Guy and David Ferrier.

Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of forensic medicine / by William A. Guy and David Ferrier. 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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    The original aim of this work was to furnish, for teacher and learner alike, a Textbook, in which principles and results should he clearly and briefly stated, disencumbered of minute details, and containing only such illustrative cases as could for the most part be compressed into a narrow compass. But this brevity and condensation were found quite consistent with an original treatment of several subjects, and with a laboiious analysis of facts which others had left undigested, and therefore useless or misleading. Of such elaborate analysis, the first edition contained several examples, in the chapters on Personal Identity, Infanticide, Legitimacy, and Unsou^ndness of Mind. Some of these analyses, having served their purpose of de- monstrating the uselessness of ceitain tests and standards of comparison, were omitted from the second edition ; many illus- trative cases were also either curtailed or set aside, thus leaving room for a considerable luimber of wood engi'avings, comprising <lrawings of seeds, minute structui-es, and chemical reactions as seen under the microscope. The second edition thus became the first English treatise on Forensic Medicine in which such illustrations were largely used. It also contained some new chemical facts and tests, arising out