previously given should be carefully followed. All injured or diseased parts should be removed and preserved whenever this is practicable. Soft parts not intended for analysis may be preserved in a concentrated solution of salt. =Beyond what Period is it useless to Exhume a Corpse=?--There is no scientific limit, for even the bones may show that violence has been used, or may point to the identity of a corpse, as in the case of Livingstone just mentioned. Pregnancy may be detected. The medical inspectors must proceed with the inspection unless they can positively say that the progress of decay is such as to render the examination nugatory in relation to its special objects. Casper mentions the case of a man whose body was three times exhumed for different purposes. In Scotland the law imposes a limit of twenty years, but in England the law is silent on the point; in France a limit of ten years from the date of the supposed crime; and in Germany, the limit is thirty years, if the offence is that punishable with death, the time varying from three to thirty years with the nature of the crime. CHAPTER V ASSAULTS, HOMICIDE, AND WOUNDS =Assault.=--Every act of attack upon the person of another is an assault in law, whether it injure or not; nor is it necessary that the act done take effect. Spitting on anyone is an assault. No provocation by word, whether written or spoken, can justify an assault, though it may mitigate the offence. If a medical man unnecessarily strip a female patient naked, under pretence that he cannot otherwise judge of her illness, it is an assault if he himself take off her clothes (R. _v._ Rosinski, 1 Mood C.C. 12). So, where a medical man had connection with a girl fourteen years of age, under the pretence that he was thereby treating her medically for the complaint for which he was attending her, she making no resistance solely from the _bona fide_ belief that such was the case, this was held to be certainly an assault, and probably a rape (R. _v._ Case, 1 Den. 580; 19 L.J. [M.C.] 174). Such an act is now held to constitute a rape. =Battery.=--This includes beating or wounding. A touch of the finger, however slight, is included under this term. =Homicide.=--In Scotch law homicide is held to be committed only where a distinctly self-existent human life has been destroyed. Destruction of an unborn child, however short a time before delivery, may be criminal, but is not homicidal. In the same country criminal homicide is divided into two classes: (1) Murder. (2) Culpable Homicide.