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 TO THE SECOND EDITION. In the present edition nearly three hundred pages have been added to the legal and psychological department. The chapters on Insanity have been rearranged, expanded, and in some material points corrected, so as to bring them in harmony with the current decisions of the English and American courts. Several distinct topics have been in- troduced and examined at length ; among which may be mentioned Survivorship; Medical Malpractice; the Legal Relations of Identity; the presumptions to be drawn from wounds and the Instrument of Death, and the Psychical Indications of Guilt. On the other hand, the chapters on circumstantial evidence have been condensed by abridging cases which in the first edition were new to the professional eye, but which have since become generally accessible. Without making any alteration in the general arrangement of the medical portion of the work, the editor has added to it about eighty pages of new matter, consisting of a chapter on the Signs of Death, besides many illustrative cases, and recent methods of investigation. Very little space has been devoted to the discussion of general principles, for in criminal legal proceedings particular persons and acts are concerned, whose reciprocal relations constitute the sole sub- ject of inquiry. All rules, therefore, which are liable to frequent ex- ceptions, should be very cautiously admitted as tests in practice, when their weight may incline the scales of justice, and afiect the life, liberty, or character of the accused. The original text has been carefully revised, and pains everywhere taken to render the language clear, and the statements accurate ; in a word, to make this portion of the work, as nearly as possible, what its lamented author would have done, had he survived to perform a similar duty. F. W. A. S.