Origin and progress of medical jurisprudence, 1776-1876 : a centennial address / by Stanford E. Chaillé.

  • Chaillé, Stanford Emerson, 1830-1911.
Date:
1876
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Origin and progress of medical jurisprudence, 1776-1876 : a centennial address / by Stanford E. Chaillé. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the future of Anglo-American Medical Jurisprudence, are not the only disadvantages against which this nation has had to contend. It in- herited from Great Britain not even a page of the literature, in fact nothing of Medical Jurisprudence except laws hostile to it. So desti- tute was it of those indispensable promoters of science, well endowed institutions, with libraries, laboratories, and museums ; so exhausted by the war for independence; so closely occupied by the pressing demands of daily life; and so profitably absorbed by glorious efforts to preset to civilization a savage continent, that every science seems to have required half our century to secure the conditions necessary to fairly be^in its culture.1 Another potent, yet ill-appreciated friend to science, pressure of population, now wanting in many, was long wanting in every State. Finally, while a European nation requires hut one legislative body to reform its laws, our political system now necessitates the action of thirty- eight State-legislatures to embrace the entire nation. Just consideration of all these impediments should incline other nations not to condemn, if we have done little for Medical Jurisprudence, but rather to wonder that we have done anything at all; and to con- gratulate us that, so great has been the diffusion of knowledge, so ardent the love of justice, we have in the main kept pace with, and in some particulars have even outstripped, our mother-land. Fairly we can claim no more; reasonably no more should be expected. II. What have our Medical Colleges done to cultivate and to disseminate, a knowledge of Medical Jurisprudence?—The first chair of Medical Juris- prudence was established by the “College of Physicians and Surgeons” of New York City, and filled by Prof. Stringham,2 in 1813. In 1815 two other Colleges3 had chairs devoted to the usual branches with Medical Jurisprudence attached to some one of these. In 1825 there were about twenty-two medical colleges; of these only one had a full chair, and only five others had even the fraction of a chair devoted to the subject.4 At present (1875-6) there are sixty-four regular medical colleges (four of these for women). A report5 as to forty-six of 1 To illustrate this as to medicine, and also the practical difficulty encountered by the courts in securing, under our laws, the evidence of competent experts, the following facts are stated: Prof. S. D. Gross reports that in 1776 the United States had about 3000 prac- tising physicians, of whom the great majority had never received a medical education, and those who had, were educated abroad. Prof. Austin Flint, Sr., reports that in 1776 our two medical colleges (one founded in Philadelphia in 1768, the other in New York City in 1770) had not graduated even fifty doctors of medicine, and that up to 1800 the five colleges then existing had graduated only about two hundred. Thacher’s “ History of Medical Science in the United States” reports that it was computed that in 1826 the United States had 10,000 “ very easily graduated” doctors of medicine, and more than 15,000 practitioners without diplomas. Prof. John B. Beck wrote that, “ at no period in the history of this country, it may safely be asserted, has empiricism flourished to the same fearful extent as at the present time [1845], notwithstanding our boasted improvements in other respects.” In 1870, the United States had 62,383 practitioners of medicine; of these there were per- haps 47,000 “ very easily graduated” doctors, and at least 15,000 quacks outside of profes- sional ranks. 2 Dr. Stringham was also the first lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence in the United States, viz., in New York City in 1804. 3 In 1815, “The College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of New York” appointed Dr. T. li. Beck “ Professor of the Institutes of Medicine, and Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence and the Medical Department of Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.) appointed Dr. Walter Channing “ Professor of Midwifery and of Medical Juris- prudence.” 4 See “ Thacher’s History of Medical Science in the United States, 1828.” 6 Due to the courtesy of (my colleague on this occasion) Prof. N. S. Davis, M.D., of Chicago, 111. The forty-six graduate more than nine-tenths of all our annual graduates. The twenty-five graduate fully one-half of the whole number.