But since it must be admitted that questions of _Survivorship_ will occasionally assume a form highly capable of physiological elucidation, we are bound to consider the subject as an article of Medical Jurisprudence. The physical proofs by which we can arrive at a conclusion upon the fact of _Survivorship_, are necessarily precarious and doubtful; but, in the absence of all other testimony, they may be occasionally admissible: a question, for instance, has arisen in a case where the mother and infant have both been found dead, after a clandestine delivery, whether any physiological investigation could determine which of the two survived the other, and upon this question there have been several curious decisions; _Valentini_, in his Pandects, relates an instance in which the mother and offspring both lost their lives during the pangs of a difficult and protracted labour; when the medical witnesses, having considered the extreme delicacy of the infant on the one hand, and the exhaustion of the parent on the other, arrived at the conclusion that the latter must have been the first to perish. The Imperial Chamber of Wetzlar[597] came to a similar decision, in a case somewhat analogous; but in opposition to such an opinion _Capuron_,[598] _Belloc_,[599] and _Sue_[600] have maintained the extreme uncertainty of any general conclusion deduced from so many uncertain data; a judgment in which we heartily concur. Let us, however, suppose a question of _Survivorship_ to have arisen in consequence of a party having perished by famine, on a barren rock; here the lights of science may assist the decision; for the physiologist will tell us that persons so situated will perish with a rapidity proportioned to their youth, and state of robust vigour; a fact which is no less correctly than beautifully illustrated by the poet, in the awful fate of Count Ugolino and his children; where the father perished by inanition on the eighth day of his imprisonment, after having seen his sons, unfortunate victims of the most execrable vengeance ever conceived by man, sink amidst the convulsions of exhausted nature.