Medical evidence in railway accidents / by John Charles Hall.

  • Hall, John Charles, 1816-1876.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical evidence in railway accidents / by John Charles Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/64 (page 9)
    between himself and the various brother practitioners he is daily in the habit of meeting at the bedside of his patients ; and the answer must be, that between two men of experience such differences of opinion as these are the very rare exceptions, rather than the rule. Why then is it, that only when medical men become witnesses in railway accidents all is darkness and con- fusion ? Why is it that such injuries alone lead physicians and surgeons to contrary conclusions ? This is a question, the importance of which it is quite impossible to over estimate. On the one hand, every traveller who suffers in consequence of acci- dents caused by the negligence of the servants of a railway company, has a just claim for the most liberal compensation; on the other hand, be it remembered, railway shareholders — many of them widows and orphans, whose all depends on the payment of the dividends—have their rights as well as the passengers they carry, and for whose comfort and convenience they provide; and it does appear every day more and more questionable, whether the present mode of assessing damages by a jury be the best way of arriving at a correct conclusion. Last year, as the President of the Yorkshire Branch of the British Medical Association, I felt it my duty to bring the question of conflicting medical evidence in railway accidents prominently before the members; and the hearty acquiescence in the opinions I then ventured to express induces me to pursue the subject. Mr. Erichsen, in his work On Railway and other Injuries of the Nervous System, says :— Actions for damages for injuries alleged (the italics are mine) to have been sustained in railway collisions, have become of such very frequent occurrence as now to constitute a very important part of medico-legal enquiry. (Page 45.) On this alleged or asserted plea the whole question rests; and in every case, it is the bounden duty of the medical examiner to separate the real from