The answer to the charge is obvious, and, we trust, satisfactory. The progress of medical knowledge, including its collateral branches of science, can only within a few years be said to have rendered its applications available to the laws; while the spirit of British liberty and independence not only resists the perpetual intrusion of authorities, so necessary in other countries for the preservation of the public health, but insures, without the aid of legal enactments, all the benefits which can accrue from domestic cleanliness and attention.[50] But upon each of these points it will be necessary to offer some farther remarks. That the evidence afforded by an improving, but still precarious and imperfect physiology, should have been indiscriminately received at the tribunals of those countries where the decision of questions of justice is too often influenced, and even directed by the subtleties of casuistry, may be regarded as a subject of regret, but can scarcely excite the feeling of astonishment. Nor can we, on the other hand, be surprised to find, that the extreme jealously of the British courts of judicature should have resisted testimony which admits of being depreciated, or in any degree rendered questionable, by the doubtful controversies of science. So rapid, however, has been the progress of the leading branches of medical knowledge during the last ten years; and so successfully have they disentangled themselves from the many fatal fallacies with which they were encompassed, that the general prejudice against their practical utility, in advancing the administration of justice, must gradually subside, and the study of forensic medicine become universally popular. To strengthen our conviction upon this point we have only to compare the evidence of medical men, as delivered in the courts of justice during the last, and present century. Even so late as the period of _Sir Thomas Browne_, we find that learned physician bearing public testimony to the reality of diabolical illusions, and occasioning, by his evidence, the conviction and condemnation of two unfortunate persons, who were tried at Bury St. Edmonds before the Lord Chief Baron _Sir Mathew Hale_, on the capital charge of bewitching the children of a _Mr. Pacey_, and causing them to have fits![51] In examining the chemical evidence in cases of poisoning, let us only compare that which was given by _Dr. Addington_ on the trial of _Mary Blandy_, at Oxford in 1752, (_see Appendix, p. 236_) with that which has been delivered on any of the trials of the present day. Compare again the nature of the physiological evidence which has been received as satisfactory and conclusive, in cases of infanticide, with that which is acknowledged by the most distinguished physicians of our own times to be wholly inadequate to establish even a presumption of guilt.