Aids to forensic medicine and toxicology.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Aids to forensic medicine and toxicology. 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.

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    the male, by the female thorax being deeper, the costal cartilages longer, the ilia more expanded, the sacrum more concave, the coccyx movable and turned back, the tuberosities of the ischia wider apart, the pubes shallow, and the whole pelvis shallower and with larger outlets. But of all these signs the only one of any real value is the roundness of the pubic arch in the female, as compared with the pointed arch in the male. Before puberty the sex cannot be determined from an examination of the bones. Age may be calculated from the eruption of the teeth ; from the cartilages of the ribs, which gradually ossify as age advances ; from the angle formed by the ramus of the lower jaw with its body (obtuse in infancy, a right angle in the adult, and again obtuse in the aged from loss of the teeth); and from the condition of the epiphyses with regard to their attachment to their respective shafts. To determine stature, the whole skeleton should be laid out and measured, 1^^ to 2 inches being allowed for the soft parts. IV.—IMPOTENCE AND STERILITY In the male, impotence may arise from physical or mental causes. The physical causes are: too great or too tender an age; malformation of the genital organs; cryjjsorchides, defect or disease in the testicles; constitu- tional disease or debility. Masturbation, and early and excessive sexual indulgence, are also causes. The mental causes include : passion, timidity, apprehension, aversion, and disgust. The case will be remembered of the man who was impotent unless the lady were attired in a black silk dress and high-heeled French-kid boots. If a man is impotent when he marries, the marriage may be set aside on the ground that it had never been consummated. The law requires that the impotency should have existed ab initio—that is, before marriage—and should be of a permanent or incurable nature, marriage, as far as the law goes, being regarded as a contract in which it is presupposed that both the contracting parties are capable of fulfilling all the objects of marriage. In the case of the Earl of Essex the defendant admitted the