Medical Jurisprudence, Forensic medicine and Toxicology. Vol. 1 — John Shaqi
Medical Jurisprudence, Forensic medicine and Toxicology. Vol. 1Witthaus, R. A. (Rudolph August)
Science
Medical Jurisprudence, Forensic medicine and Toxicology. Vol. 1
Witthaus, R. A. (Rudolph August)
Medical jurisprudence; Poisons; Toxicology
The writings of the Greek physicians contain no reference to any legal
application of their knowledge, and certain passages in the writings
of the orators seem to indicate that, while a physician was called to
inspect and treat a wounded person, the testimony as to the patient’s
condition was given in court by others.
Thus in the case against Euergos and Mnesibulus, in which an old woman
had died some days after an assault, Demosthenes[14] states that he
notified the accused to bring a surgeon and cure the woman; but that
as they did not do so, he himself brought his own surgeon and showed
him her condition in the presence of witnesses. Upon hearing from the
surgeon that the woman was in a hopeless condition, he again explained
her state to the accused and required them to find medical aid.
Finally, on the sixth day after the assault the woman died. He further
asserts that these statements would be proved by the depositions.[15]
The third Tetralogy of Antiphon[16] (B.C. 480) relates to a case in
which the defence was essentially the same as that which was the
subject of a vast amount of medical expert testimony in a celebrated
trial for murder in New York not many years ago. A person wounds
another, who dies some days afterward. The assailant is accused of
murder and sets up the defence that the deceased perished, not from
the wounds inflicted, but in consequence of unskilful treatment by the
physicians.
In neither of these cases is any mention made of physicians having been
called upon for testimony; indeed, the statements would lead to the
inference that they were not. In another case in which a poor and sick
citizen is accused of malingering to obtain the customary pecuniary
aid from the State, Lysias[17] summons no medical evidence but relies
entirely upon a statement of his client’s case.[18]
Medical legislation was not more advanced during the ascendancy of
the Roman Empire, although medical science was greatly developed,
principally by the labors of Celsus, and of Galen and other Greek
physicians. A few cases are mentioned by the historians which would
seem to indicate a closer connection between law and medicine than
had existed among the Greeks, but they refer rather to the custom of
exposing the bodies of those who had died by violent means to public
view, in order that any one might express his opinion as to the cause
of death, than to any appeal to medical science in the administration
of justice. Thus Suetonius[19] says that the physician Antistius
examined the dead body of Julius Cæsar (B.C. 44), and declared that of
all the wounds only that received in the breast was mortal.
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