These few examples will suffice to shew that Medical Jurisprudence had an early origin; and yet we are ready to admit that its applications were extremely desultory, and often, from the infant state of the sciences upon which it rested, not only imperfect but erroneous; indeed the question may be very fairly maintained, whether on many occasions the evidence of the physician has not embarrassed where it should have enlightened, and misled where it was called upon to direct the steps of justice. Forensic medicine, however, could scarcely be considered as constituting a branch of legislation, until its utility was publicly recognised, and its assistance legally required. This admission will compel us to assign to Germany the honour of its origin, for the Medical jurist is first acknowledged, and his services formally required, in the celebrated criminal code framed by _Charles_ the Fifth, at the Diet of Ratisbon, in the year 1532, known by the name of the “_Constitutio Criminalis Carolina_,” and which still constitutes the basis of the criminal proceedings of the German courts. In the code it is enacted, that medical men shall be consulted whenever death has been occasioned by violent means, whether criminal or accidental, by wounds, poisons, hanging, drowning, or the like; as well as in cases of concealed pregnancy, procured abortion, child-murder, &c. The publication of such a code very naturally awakened the attention of the medical profession, and summoned numerous writers from its ranks. The first of whom were _Bohn_[12], _Valentini_[13], _Boerner_[14], _Kannegeiser_[15], and _Struppe_; _Alberti_[16], _Zittman_[17], _Richter_[18], _Teichmeyer_[19], and _Stark_[20]; some years after whom came _Hebenstreit_[21], _Ludwig_[22], and _Fazellius_[23].