Medical jurisprudence / by Alfred S. Taylor.

  • Taylor, Alfred Swaine, 1806-1880.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical jurisprudence / by Alfred S. Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    accused party, the questions of counsel would be limited to the situation and extent of the wound only: but this is a serious mistake. If the cause of death be at all obscure, on no account should the inspection be abandoned until all the organs and cavities of the body have been closely examined: since, it may be affirmed, that a natural cause of death might have existed in that organ and cavity which the medical witness had neglected to examine. It rests with the practitioner to disprove the probability thus urged by counsel, but he is now destitute of facts to reason from: legal ingenuity will triumph, the witness will be discomfited, and the prisoner, of whose guilt there may be, morally speaking, but little doubt, will have the benefit of his inattention, and be acquitted by the jury. The following cases will serve as an illustration of the necessity for mak- ing a close inspection of the body in death from wounds : Three men were tried on a charge of manslaughter. According to the evi- dence for the prosecution, the prisoners and the deceased had been drinking together at a public-house, when a quarrel arose, which ended in a battle between the deceased and one of the prisoners. The other two acted as seconds. The fight had continued for some time, when the deceased was knocked down by a severe blow on the head, and did not speak afterwards. A surgeon was sent for, but before his arrival, the deceased had expired. On the trial, this witness stated that he found a considerable bruise behind the ear in the region of the mastoid process, accompanied by an extravasation of blood. On being cross-examined, he admitted that he did not open the cranium, the coroner having told him that he thought it unnecessary! He ascribed the death of the deceased to a pressure of blood on the brain, which, in his opinion, might have become extravasated from a blow or fall, or from extraordinary excitement. The deceased was of an apoplectic diathesis. The learned judge observed to the jury, in summing up, that the medical evidence was not sufficient to determine whether the deceased had died from the violence employed by the prisoner, or from natural causes. An acquittal instantly followed ! This is by no means a solitary instance of the defeat of justice by the neglect of post-mortem examinations. Three similar cases occurred during the year 1847. In that of Reg. v. Parker and others (Lancaster Autumn Assizes, 1847), the deceased died, as it was alleged, from the effects of a blow received in a fight. The surgeon could not speak positively to the cause, because the coroner did not consider it necessary that the body should be inspected. In the case of Reg. v. BrookbanJc, tried at the same Assizes, in which the prisoner was chaged with having caused the death of an aged female by violence, the same medical witness stated that he could not speak with certainty as to the cause of death, the coroner having declined to grant his order for a post-mortem examination; he (the coro- ner) thought the case was not one requiring it. In a fourth case {Reg. v. Simm, New Castle Autumn Assizes, 1847), the deceased was killed during a fight, but as no post-mortem examination was considered necessary by the coroner, there was no conclusive evidence of the cause of death. In such cases of gross neglect, a medical witness is quite helpless; however important the examination of a body may appear to himself, the law actually punishes him, by depriving him of his fee, if he undertakes it without a special order from the coroner! Pollock (C B.) stated, in reference to one of these cases, that the coroner was wrong both in law and fact; there ought to have been an examination of the body, as well for the sake of the prisoner, as for the purposes of the prosecution; and Williams (J.) condemned the practice as ill-judged economy. The plan to adopt in any urgent case of a similar kind, is for a medical witness to make the inspec- tion on his own responsibility, and if the coroner refuse the fee, the judge will grant it on application at the trial. An ingenious cross-examination was made in relation to an omission of this kind in the well-known case of Greenacre, who was tried in 1837 on a charge