The special knowledge requisite to the Medical Jurist differs in many ways from that requisite for the art of healing the sick. The majority of medical students and practitioners may consider a simple exercise of common sense in the application of their general professional knowledge to the elucidation of problems of medico-legal import all that is requisite, and that no special training is necessary for the purpose. They may hope that it may never fall to their lot to be called upon to act in the capacity of medical jurists. It may occur, however, to any medical practitioner at any time of his professional career that his services be requisitioned by law for the purpose of elucidating problems of such a nature as will demand from him thought and judgment quite apart from those he exercises in the ordinary course of his medical and surgical practice. From such a requisition he has no escape; he cannot shift his responsibility to another, and it behoves him, therefore, to acquire a knowledge of Forensic Medicine, in order to guide him, when so called upon, to give such evidence as will enable a judge and jury to arrive at a just conclusion. The relations of all medical practitioners to the State are twofold--first, as healers of disease, and secondly, both as guardians of the innocent against unfounded criminal charges and aids towards the detection and punishment of crime. CHAPTER I LEGAL CRIMINAL PROCEDURE ENGLAND AND IRELAND =The Coroner‘s Court.=--The office of coroner is mentioned in a charter in 925. Coroners were formerly chosen for life by the freeholders of the district, but their election is now in the hands of the County Councils. Their duties were first clearly pointed out by the Act 4 Edw. I. c. 2, 1275 (_De officio coronatoris_). At the present time the duties of the coroner are chiefly to hold inquiry into the cause of death when there is any reason to doubt that death resulted from natural causes. When death results from natural causes, and under ordinary conditions, the medical attendant is bound, under a penalty of forty shillings, to certify as to the cause. The registrar of deaths accepts such a certificate when accompanied by oral testimony given by a person who was present at the time of death, and issues a certificate accordingly, authorising the interment of the deceased. Should conditions obtain to prevent the medical attendant from forming an opinion as to the cause of death, or which would lead him to infer that death did not take place from natural causes, he should notify the matter to the coroner. Such would be necessary if death were directly or indirectly due to accident, or if death occurred within a reasonable time after an accident, although due to some other cause, or if an accident happened to deceased during the course of a chronic illness, the accident, however, not being in itself necessarily fatal.