A treatise on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé ; the medical part revised and corrected, with numerous additions by Alfred Stillé.

  • Wharton, Francis, 1820-1889.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé ; the medical part revised and corrected, with numerous additions by Alfred Stillé. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    PREFACE. The two points which were mainly before the authors of the follow- ing treatise when they entered upon its preparation, and the hope of reaching which formed their chief inducement in approaching a topic which has already been in other respects so ably and fully discussed elsewhere, were, first, the incorporation in its pages of the results of late continental, and particularly French and German, research; and secondly, the bringing together stereoscopically—if the metaphor can be permitted—of the Legal and Medical points of vision, so that the information required by each profession might be collected and viewed at the same time and within the same compass. It was felt that in the usual range of medico-legal exposition there was a great deal that, though interesting to the medical man, is unnecessary to the legal practitioner; and, on the other hand, it is equally clear that there are many points upon which the latter needs information, which the former, either from inadvertence or from what would be to him their extreme simplicity, may forbear to touch. The converse also is true, viz., that the legal writer who undertakes such a work, except in subordination to medical advice, may exhibit very satisfactorily the necessities of legal practice, but will fail to supply the information by which these necessities can be met. These two points, viz., the absorption of recent medico-legal re- search in France and Germany, and the union of the medical and legal stand-points, it was here hoped to reach, not so much by a concurrent authorship of each page, as by a general preliminary comparison of views and adjustment of material by the two writers by whom the task was undertaken, followed up by a division of the subject matter between them in subordination to the plan previously agreed upon. In pursuance of this scheme, the second, third, fourth, and fifth books —viz., those on the Foetus and New-born Child, on Sexual Eelations, on Identity, and on the Causes of Death—were assigned to Dr. Stillc, with the exception of those sections in the two former which concern the legal relations of gestation, abortion, and rape; while to the pre- sent writer fell the preparation of the first and sixth books, embracing Mental Unsoundness and the Legal Relations of Homicide, together