The rule as to excluding experts from the court room during the examination of witnesses has been laid down, in England, thus: “Medical or other professional witnesses, who are summoned to give scientific opinions upon the circumstances of the case, as established by other testimony, will be permitted to remain in court until this particular class of evidence commences; but then, like ordinary witnesses, they will have to withdraw, and to come in one by one, so as to undergo a separate examination.” And in the United States the principle is similarly stated [312]. |121| CHAPTER IX. EXPERTS IN INSANITY CASES. The opinion evidence of medical men in questions of insanity is not, as a rule, looked upon with any very great degree of favor by the courts who have to decide upon the competency, relevancy and weight of the opinions uttered. Chapman, C.J., of Massachusetts, in charging a jury said, “While they afford great aid in determining facts, it often happens that experts can be found to testify to anything however absurd” [313]. In another insanity case another Judge remarked, “Experience has shown that opposite opinions of persons professing to be experts may be obtained to any amount, and it often occurs that not only many days but many weeks are consumed in cross-examinations to test the skill and knowledge of such witnesses, and to test the correctness of their opinions,” (this was the case to a great degree in the well known Guiteau prosecution,) “thus wasting time and wearying the patience of both Court and jury, perplexing, instead of elucidating, the question involved in the issue” [314]. As to the perplexing instead of elucidating, a writer of the highest authority gives the following, “In a case of alleged child murder a medical witness, being asked for a plain opinion of the cause of death, said, that it was owing to ‘atelectasis and a general engorgement of the pulmonary tissue’.” And in a trial for an assault a |122| surgeon, in giving his evidence, informed the Court “that on examining the prosecutor, he found him suffering from a severe contusion of the integument under the left orbit, with great extravasation of blood and ecchymosis in the surrounding cellular tissue, which was in a tumefied state, and there was also considerable abrasion of the cuticle.” The Judge said, “You mean, I suppose, that the man had a bad black eye.” “Yes.” “Then why not say so at once” [315].