In Indiana it has been held that where the patient testifies in an action against his physician for malpractice the physician is then at liberty to testify or to introduce any other witness to testify concerning the matters in controversy.[481] In Michigan, a physician who was plaintiff in a libel suit was not permitted to insist upon the privilege to prevent the disclosure of his maltreatment of his patient or what other physicians had discovered with regard to it by visits to his patients.[482] The measure of the physician’s exemption and liability in testifying is the language of the statute, and not his idea of his duty to his patient or the patient’s injunctions of confidence or secrecy.[483] In some of the States there are statutory provisions entitling physicians to sue for compensation for their professional services.[484] The statutes regarding privileged communications are to be construed together with these. There seems to be no reason why a physician’s right of action for his services and medicines should not survive the prohibition of his evidence; but it would seem that he cannot as a witness in such an action testify regarding privileged matter. But he can prove it by other witnesses.[485] THE RESULT OF THE LEGISLATION. It is doubtless due to considerations of public policy that the statutes changing the common-law rule have been enacted;[486] but they have not proved an unalloyed benefit, and some of their features have brought about conditions which in some cases have embarrassed the administration of justice. The law in New York may be taken for illustration; it formerly cut off the safest means of ascertaining the mental condition and competency of a testator;[487] it now precludes a physician from disclosing the condition of his patient who is a lunatic or habitual drunkard,[488] though it be the most satisfactory evidence; it shuts out much testimony tending to show fraud in insurance cases;[489] it precludes a physician from stating the cause of his patient’s death,[490] though there is no longer any secrecy connected with it, for the law makes it the duty of the physician to make, for filing with the local board of health, a certificate of the probable cause of the death of a patient.[491] It has been the subject of much adverse criticism,[492] but all such considerations are properly to be addressed to the legislature and not to the courts. It seems to be the most far-reaching in its exclusion, and though it has been the longest in existence, was modified at the legislative sessions of 1891, 1892, and 1893, a fact which tends to show that there was sound reason in the criticisms. A SYNOPSIS OF THE LAWS OF THE SEVERAL STATES AND TERRITORIES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, AND OF THE NORTH AMERICAN PROVINCES OF GREAT BRITAIN, REGULATING THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY, PREPARED FROM THE LATEST STATUTES. BY WILLIAM A. POSTE,