It was as a medical witness in important legal cases that Dr. Swaine Taylor was most widely known. If a case of unusual character was before the courts, it came to be expected that he should be called as a witness, and for many years he was retained by the Treasury as their medical adviser on such cases. It is impossible here to refer to the numerous important cases of this character in which Dr. Taylor figured. A writer in the _Medical Times_ for June 12 and 19, 1880 (pp. 642, 671), enters into this question from full knowledge, and describes him thus: “Personally Taylor was of a tall and imposing figure, gracious to friends and bitter to foes, and, as the lawyers found, a superb witness, not to be shaken by any light word of doctrine.... There was a thoroughness about Taylor’s work which was always satisfactory.” In regard to the celebrated Palmer trial, Dr. Taylor was severely cross-examined, and was contradicted in important points by experts called for the defence. In fact, it is possible that the case would have gone in favour of the prisoner but for the strong confirmation of the view of the prosecution given by Dr. Christison, to which we have already referred. Dr. Taylor expressed his strong views on this question in an extended pamphlet “On Poisoning by Strychnia,” most of which appeared in Guy’s Hospital Reports for 1856. He died on May 27, 1880. CHAPTER XXVIII. _PARKES, GUY, SIMON, AND PUBLIC HEALTH._ “Prevention is better than cure” is the homely proverb which marks out a large proportion of the work of sanitary science. The prevention of disease and of its spread, and the promotion of the general healthiness of the people—these are objects which modern progress has brought into view. When they are completely attained we shall all die of old age unless cut off by accidents or violence; and this is a goal which many sanitarians of the present day have vividly before their mind. The public health and the public welfare have been sought by no man more earnestly than by EDMUND ALEXANDER PARKES. Of him Dr. Russell Reynolds said:[24] “In the combination of moral, mental, and physical beauty, Dr. Parkes was to my knowledge never equalled, to my belief cannot be surpassed. Pure as a sunbeam, strong as a man, tender as a woman, keen as any scientist to unravel the hidden mysteries of life in its minutest detail of chemical and physiological research, yet practical in the application of his knowledge to the cleansing of a drain or the lightening of a knapsack; he made the world much richer by his life, much poorer by his death.”