The knowledge of _Forensic Medicine_, if not as ancient and universal as the Institutes of Medical Police, may still boast of an early origin, and a very extensive influence; thus in _Deuteronomy_[8] in cases of doubtful virginity, the Elders are to be consulted, in order that they may deliver their judgment from the physiological evidence of the case. In ancient nations the assistance of the philosopher and physician was universally required for the prevention, as well as detection of crime; thus was _Archimedes_ consulted by the king of Sicily, when a workman was suspected to have fraudulently alloyed the gold in his crown. The Romans, especially in the reign of _Severus_, _Antonine_, _Adrian_, and _Aurelius_, constructed several laws, and reformed some others, in conformity with the sentiments inculcated in the works of _Hippocrates_ and _Aristotle_; the capital crime of procuring abortion was accordingly limited to those cases wherein the fœtus exceeded forty days; and the _Emperor Adrian_ passed a decree upon the subject of legitimacy, as connected with the period of utero-gestation, according to the physiological opinions with respect to the possibility of retarded delivery;[9] while _Numa Pompilius_ prohibited the burial of a pregnant woman, or of one supposed to be pregnant, until the fœtus should have been extracted, or the state of the uterus ascertained by dissection.[10]. The trials by ordeal in the dark ages of modern Europe, when the decision of the most important questions was abandoned to chance or to fraud, when carrying in the hand a piece of red hot iron, or plunging the arm in boiling water,[11] was deemed a test of innocence, and a painful or fraudulent experiment, supplanting a righteous award, might consign to punishment the most innocent, or save from it the most criminal of men, have ever been deemed a shocking singularity in the institutions of our barbarous ancestors. We are ready to admit the justice of this charge generally; and yet we fancy that, upon some occasions we are enabled to discern through the dim mist of credulity and ignorance, a ray of policy that may have been derived from the dawning of a rude philosophy. Trials by ordeal, as we are informed by Mr. _Mill_, hold a high rank in the institutes of the Hindus. It appears that there are no less than nine different modes of trial, but that _by water in which an idol has been washed_, and the one _by rice_, are those which we shall select as well calculated to illustrate the observations which we shall venture to offer. The first of these trials consists in obliging the accused person to drink three draughts of the water in which the images of the Sun and other deities have been washed; and if within fourteen days he has any indisposition, his crime is considered as proved. In the other species of ordeal alluded to, the persons suspected of theft are each made to chew a quantity of dried rice, and to throw it upon some leaves or bark of a tree; they, from