Medical jurisprudence also seems to have had its beginning during this century. It had long been the practice to summon physicians to court in order to enlighten the judiciary in questions demanding particular knowledge in physics and medicine; indeed, the practice began{167} under the first Christian emperors, and owes its origin to ecclesiastical authority. Charlemagne confirmed in this regard what Justinian was perhaps the first to ordain. The tribunal of Châtelet, according to Renouard, appears to have been the first which comprehended the great utility of consultation with expert physicians; an edict of Philip le Bel, in 1311, qualified Master John Potard with the title "Sworn Surgeon of Châtelet", and the constitution promulgated by Charles V, in 1552, gave great importance to medical jurisprudence, as it treated in detail of infanticide, wounds, poisons, abortion, and other such crimes. Early in the seventeenth century Fidelis collated all that had been written on this subject, and thus published the first special treatise on legal medicine. Some writers claim to have discovered traces of clinical teaching in the history of Arabian universities, but, as Renouard says, the presence of a few pupils during visitations and consultations no more constituted real clinical teaching than the practice adopted by some practitioners of ancient Rome of being ever surrounded by a group of spectators whom they dignified with the title of disciples. The first attempt at real clinical teaching appears to have been in the hospital of St. Francis, in Padua, in 1558, by Botoni and Oddi. About the beginning of the seventeenth century Otto de Heurne, of the University of Leyden, introduced bedside instruction, which was continued by le Boe, sometimes called Sylvius, with the result of drawing-large crowds of students to Leyden from 1658 to 1672. Notwithstanding the success attained, the practice was neglected by the successors of Sylvius until renewed by Boerhaave, who, invested with several functions at the University of Leyden, also occupied the chair of medicine. So great was the renown of Boerhaave that, despite the poverty of the resources of the Leyden hospital, people came to consult him from the most distant countries, and he was a correspondent of several crowned heads, even of the Pope, although{168} himself a Protestant. During his life and long afterward he exerted an immense influence in medicine, and while, perhaps, inferior in genius to some of his contemporaries, he had a wider reputation, and his doctrines prevailed longer. The great success of his clinics decided in favor of this method of teaching, and in 1715 the Pope established in Rome a similar institution, under the direction of the celebrated Lancisi. Soon Edinburgh, Vienna, Pavia, and other universities followed suit, the first clinical chair in Paris being held by Corvisart, and the first in Vienna by Van Swieten. After the demise