Introductory address to a course of lectures on forensic medicine delivered at King's College, London / by William Robert Smith.

  • Smith, William Robert, 1850-1932.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory address to a course of lectures on forensic medicine delivered at King's College, London / by William Robert Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    In France Forensic Medicine is said to date as a science from the twelfth century in the rules given in the Assizes of Jerusalem for drawing up exemptions from certain civil and military duties. In 1603 Henri III authorised his physicians to appoint persons skilled in medicine and surgery to make judicial inspections and reports in all cities and royal jurisdictions. In 1692 Louis XIV created hereditary royal physicians and surgeons for the same purpose, with certain immunities and privileges, but their compe- tition became so notorious that they were suppressed in 1790 ; how- ever, various decrees passed subsequently by the Parliament of Paris tended to the improvement of Legal Medicine. During this century the only works which appeared were Gendry's *^ Sur les Moyens de bien rapporter a Justice, and Blegny's L*Art de faire des Eapports en Chirurgie. During the eighteenth century much progress was made. In 1722 Valentini published an excellent work entitled Corpus Juris Medico-legale, which embodies a review of the labours of all that had been done up to that time, and forms a vast store-house of medico-legal information, and gives a summary of the knowledge of the time. Many professorships were founded about this time for teaching the subject in the German universities, and German writers became very numerous. Teichmeyer's Institutiones Medicinse Legalis long formed the text-book on the subject, ■whilst subsequently the Systema of Alberti, Professor of Legal Medicine at Halle, in six quarto volumes, was the most complete and laborious work that had ever been published on the subject. Towards the close of the last century the Germans were almost the only successful cultivators of Medical Jurisprudence. In 1784 the Bibliothek by Daniel, appeared, and the term ^'State Medicine is here first applied to this branch of knowledge.