liability when he acts with good motives and honest intentions” [219]. If the death of a man has been accelerated by the want of due skill and competency, or by the carelessness, of his physician, the latter cannot defend himself by proving that his patient was afflicted with a mortal disease [220]. If a man who has received a serious wound is placed under the charge of a surgeon who, in probing the wound or otherwise operating on the patient, immediately causes his death; then, if the surgeon has acted negligently, or maliciously, he is indictable for the homicide, and the original assailant only for an attempt. But, if the surgeon using due skill and care occasions death while he is endeavouring to heal the wound, then he who inflicted the wound is chargeable with the death; for he who does an unlawful act is responsible for all the consequences that in the ordinary course of events flow from it. It is an ordinary consequence of a wound that a surgeon should be called in to attend to it, |91| and it is a necessary incident of surgery that patients should die under the knife. It is no defence, where a death is not shewn to have been produced by the medical attendant’s negligence, that the deceased might have recovered if a higher degree of professional skill had been employed [221]. If a person is assailed by a fatal disease, and there is no escape from it, save by a dangerous surgical operation, then, if he gives his free and intelligent consent to the operation, and it is skilfully performed, the surgeon cannot be blamed even though the patient perish under the knife. The German Jurists go still further and say, suppose a dangerous operation is required as the last hope of resuscitating an unconscious person; if the operation is performed with the skill usual to surgeons under such circumstances, and death ensue, the surgeon is blameless [222]. If a woman is in such a state of labor that her life can only be preserved by the sacrifice of that of the child, then it is not only the right but the duty of the attendant to save the mother at the expense of the babe. Wharton says that this position is indisputable [223]. From the leading cases the following propositions may be extracted, say Wharton and Stillè, sec. 1063. 1. If the defendant acted honestly and used his best skill to cure, and it does not appear that he thrust himself in the place of a competent person, it makes no difference whether he was at the time a regular physician or surgeon, or not. 2. To constitute guilt, gross ignorance or negligence must be proved. |92| 3. A defendant who, with competent knowledge, makes a mistake in a remedy is not answerable, but it is otherwise when a violent remedy, shewn to have occasioned death, is administered by a person grossly ignorant but with average capacity, in which case malice is presumed in the same way that it is presumed when a man _compos mentis_ lets loose a mad bull into a thoroughfare, or casts down a log of wood on a crowd.