In New York it is provided that “a physician or surgeon may upon a trial or examination disclose any information as to the mental or physical condition of a patient who is deceased, which he acquired in attending such patient professionally, except confidential communications and such facts as would tend to disgrace the memory of the patient, when the protection has been expressly waived on such trial or examination by the personal representatives of the deceased patient, or if the validity of the last will and testament of such deceased patient is in question, by the executor or executors named in said will, or the surviving husband, widow, or any heir at law, or any of the next of kin of such deceased, or any other party in interest.”[227] The notable characteristics of the several statutes which thus far have been pointed out are discernible in the express language of the acts. In writing or using any treatise or compilation on privileged communications between physician and patient, it is to be constantly borne in mind that the privilege is of statutory origin; that the statutes are often dissimilar; and that the value of a judicial interpretation of one law in the construction of another varies with the dissimilarity. JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION OF THE STATUTES. The judicial decisions which are discussed here are those that deal with the privilege secured by the restrictive laws. The analogy between the privilege of a client with regard to his attorney’s disclosures, and that of a patient with regard to the testimony of his physician, is not so complete as to make it essential to present here, for the sake of their bearing upon the subject now under consideration, a study of the principles to be deduced from the numerous decisions with reference to attorneys as witnesses. The analogous cases of clergymen and priests are also beyond the scope of this treatment. _Rules of Construction._—The restrictions are in derogation of the common law[228] and in accordance with the rule of interpretation ordinarily adopted should be strictly construed,[229] but the courts have generally looked at the policy of the enactments, and have construed them so as to preserve inviolably the confidence existing between physician and patient, without narrowing their effect to a strict interpretation of their language.