The Law and Medical MenRogers, R. Vashon (Robert Vashon)
History
The Law and Medical Men
Rogers, R. Vashon (Robert Vashon)
Medical laws and legislation
Redfield, C.J., in his book on Wills, says, “Experience has shown both
here and in England that medical experts differ quite as widely in
their inferences and opinions as do other witnesses. This has become
so uniform a result with the medical experts of late that they are
beginning to be regarded much in the light of hired advocates, and
their testimony as nothing more than a studied argument in favor of
the side for which they have been called. So uniformly has this been
proved in our experience that it would excite scarcely less surprise to
find an expert called on one side testifying in any particular in favor
of the other side, than to find the counsel upon either side arguing
against their clients and in favor of their antagonists” [316].
A Lord Chancellor once remarked that his experience taught him that
there were very few cases of insanity in which any good came from the
examination of medical men. Their evidence sometimes adorned a case,
and gave rise to very agreeable and interesting scientific discussions,
but after all they have little or no weight with the jury. And Mr.
Justice Davis, of the Supreme Court of Maine, after stating that he
thought juries far more trust-worthy than experts on the subject of
insanity, said, “if there is any kind of testimony that is not only of
no value but |123| even worse than that, it is in my judgment that of
medical experts. They may be able to state the diagnosis of the disease
more learnedly, but upon the question whether it had, at a given time,
reached such a stage that the subject of it was incapable of making a
contract, or irresponsible for his acts, the opinion of his neighbors,
if men of good common sense, would be worth more than that of all the
experts in the country” [317]. There is scarcely a single hypothesis
as to responsibility (on the part of the insane), no matter how wild,
which, among the large number of experts who have concerned themselves
with this branch of study, has not its advocates. So says Wharton
in his valuable treatise on Mental Unsoundness [318]; or as Cicero
elegantly put it long ago, “_nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non
dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum_” [319].
Considering these things, one is not surprised at Campbell, C.J., in
the Bambridge case, saying to three medical men who had recorded their
opinions in favor of the insanity of the testator: “You may go home to
your patients, and I wish you may be more usefully employed there, than
you have been here;” and to the jury he remarked, “We have had during
the trial the evidence of three medical witnesses, and I think they
might as well have stayed at home and attended to their patients.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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