The claims of forensic medicine : being the introductory lecture delivered in the University of London, on Monday, May 11, 1829. / By John Gordon Smith.

  • Smith, John Gordon, 1792-1833.
Date:
1829
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The claims of forensic medicine : being the introductory lecture delivered in the University of London, on Monday, May 11, 1829. / By John Gordon Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    It relates, as its title signifies, to the occasions on which medical men furnish assistance to the public courts, or in the Forum,as the Romans were in the habit of saying; (and we might with corresponding accuracy designate it the medi- cine of Westminster Hall). It involves every question con- nected with injury to the person,—many of life and death,—of property and of reputation. To these, in a short introductory lecture, it would be impossible to make distinct allusion; and I do not know that there is any other term conveying exactly the same meaning. The French have styled it Mtdecine legale, but we lose the meaning of the term by translating it into English. Legal Medicine will not convey the conventional signification of La Mtdecine legale; and the Medicine of Law would, though perhaps quite correct, sound strangely in English ears. All I profess, however, on the present occasion, is to undertake a course of instruction in FORENSIC MEDI- CINE, without affecting to be any thing of a lawyer, though in the course of my studies I have acquired some knowledge of the relationship that the law of England bears to the mem- bers of her medical profession, as well as of the use that me- dicine ought to furnish to law and justice. I have no fear of qualifying those who choose to place themselves under my tuition for giving professional testimony in courts of every description, with propriety, comfort, and respectability, if not even with personal advantage. This naturally conducts us to the third inquiry; viz. What are the duties imposed by this application of medical know- ledge ?—that is to say, the duties imposed upon medical men. They are two, exceedingly simple in themselves, but, from the way in which they are blundered through, the terror and dismay of the medical world. The first is, to declare the state of professional knowledge; and the second, to acquire the knowledge itself. It is true that in thus advancing the proposition, I have reversed its natural order; for it is neces- sary, whatever some may conceive to the contrary, first to learn; there can be little teaching to the purpose, where this part of the business does not go before the other.