The eighteenth century, says _Foderé_[37], an æra remarkable for the conversion of the human mind from the enthusiasm of poetry and the fine arts, to the cultivation and study of the exact sciences, must be considered as the auspicious dawn of medico-legal knowledge in France. The spirit of emulation which animated the rival schools of Surgery and Medicine, produced men, who enlightened by their talents every department of the science of Medicine. Professor _Louis_, Secretary to the Academy of Surgery, taught publicly in the schools the art of resolving different questions in medical jurisprudence, which previous to his time had never been practised. Numerous memoirs on its various branches appeared in succession; eloquence allied itself to science, and their combined efforts were displayed in this novel mode of benefiting mankind. Upon the great principles of justice and humanity which presided at the reform of the penal code, chairs of medical jurisprudence were established in all the faculties of medicine. In 1788, _Louis_ published at Paris his letters on the certainty of the signs of death, in answer to the dissertations of _Winslow_ and _Bruhier_; and of whose judicious remarks we have availed ourselves in the discussion of the subjects of “Real and Apparent Death.” (_Vol. II. p. 15_). To the same author we are also indebted for memoirs on Drowning, and on the means of distinguishing Suicide from Assassination in cases of death by suspension. His Consultations on the celebrated causes of _Monbailly_, _Syrven_, _Calas_, _Cassagneux_, and _Baronet_, which are recorded in the “_Causes Célébres_,” must serve to exalt him still higher in our estimation. _Winslow_ engaged his talents in the investigation of the Cæsarean Operation, including its moral, political, and religious relations. _Petit_ and _Bouvart_ entered the field as controversialists, and disputed the opinions of _Louis_ on protracted pregnancy, with considerable ability. The former of these philosophers wrote also several memoirs on the phenomena of suspension and strangulation; he, moreover, examined the question relative to the signs of death from abstinence. _Lorry_ discussed the question of survivorship with great acuteness and judgment. _Salin_ attempted to deduce from the character of the organic lesions, an inference with respect to the nature of the poison that inflicted them; and he illustrated this opinion in an elaborate memoir on the research of the traces of poison on the body of _Lamotte_, sixty-seven days after it had been deposited in the earth; in which he decides that the death was occasioned by _corrosive sublimate_.[38] And although the nice distinctions which this ingenious writer laboured to establish never had any existence but in his own imagination, yet the agitation of so important a question was by no means unprofitable; it directed the attention of the physician to the state of the organic lesions, and has ultimately led to some useful conclusions.