An analysis of medical evidence : comprising directions for practitioners in the view of becoming witnesses in courts of justice, and an appendix of professional testimony / By John Gordon Smith, M.D.

  • Smith, John Gordon, 1792-1833.
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An analysis of medical evidence : comprising directions for practitioners in the view of becoming witnesses in courts of justice, and an appendix of professional testimony / By John Gordon Smith, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    After the atlmissions I have already made, it might be superfluous to acknowledge that I am aware of the existence of many defects. If it be asked, why I did not guard against them, perhaps it may be tliought I should in honesty answer, that I was unable. But, with regard to some of them, and even of the most palpable, I will not wholly admit such a plea, but venture to say, that I might have supplied the hiatus in appearance, without doing so in reality. The display that every individual must make, in the situation under notice, is so strictly a matter of personal peculiarity, that it would have been difficult, perhaps, in exceeding the bounds within which I have restricted myself, to have avoided going too far. It would be impossible for the pen of man to write that which would deliver the timid, the nervous, or the bashful, from their particular infirmity. No instruction can convey the habit, or even the gift of addressing a public audience; no exhortations can impart boldness, or presence of mind, w'hich, in such circumstances, the strongest intrinsic resolution is so often inadequate to afford; no precedents abroad, not only as a magazine of professional science in general, but in a particular manner as an organ of authority in the medico-legal department. With regard to Medical Evidence, the uTiter of the article in question truly observes, that its nature is very little understood, either by lawyers, or by phy- sicians and surgeons; and we are likewise fully satisfied, that this ignorance of its nature is the chief cause why it still continues in so low a state, and is treated with so much con- tumely.