The application of Medical science to jurisprudence may, practically considered, be said to have commenced in France about the time of Francis I; but it was not until after the publication of the _Constitutio Criminalis Carolina_, that the French government, unwilling to allow their criminal code to remain less perfect and refined than that of their continental neighbours, decreed that the assistance of physicians and surgeons should be legally required; and which was at length rendered still more peremptory by letters patent granted by Henry IV, in 1606, conferring upon his first physician the privilege of nominating surgeons in every town to the exclusive exercise of this important duty; and Louis XIV. in 1667, after having formally declared, that all Reports which had not received the sanction of such an officer should be invalid, ordered by a decree, in 1692, that a physician shall always be present with the surgeon, at the examination of a body[36]; the surgeons, however, of those times were not distinguished by the knowledge which they now possess; hence, in every thing that did not directly involve surgical discussion and practice, their reports were frequently defective. Magistrates were consequently induced to summon the more learned physician to the assistance of the Juridical Surgeon, long before it was enforced by the law; a practice, which like many others, acquired force and regularity from repetition. _Ambrose Paré_ is acknowledged as the first French writer on the subject of Juridical Medicine, and his treatise on Reports, published in 1575, was, for nearly a century, regarded as the only standard authority upon these occasions; it was, however, at length, to a great degree, superseded by the more accomplished treatises of _Gendri_ of Angers, in 1650, of _Blegni_ of Lyons, in 1684, and of _Deveaux_ of Paris, in 1693. This latter work is one of very considerable merit, especially as it regards the diagnosis and prognosis of wounds.