Illustrations of medical evidence and trial by jury in Scotland.

Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illustrations of medical evidence and trial by jury in Scotland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    66/66 (page 62)
    are two sorts of evidence, which may be distinguished as hearsay or Procurator-Fiscal’s, and authentic, or that of the Justiciary Court. But, if the Lord Justice-Clerk’s court is so fiistidious as he alleges, in regard to the admission of medical evidence, I should wish to ask how it could happen that a man was sentenced to death by this tribunal for the murder of a woman, without any examination of the medical men under whose care she died, or any information as to the cause of death, except from persons who had not seen her in life? Be this as it may, I venture to hope, that my efforts to ex- pose the impropriety of employing secondary evidence in judicial investigations will not prove fruitless. Attention has now been fully awakened to the subject; and I need hardly say, that the most obstinate adherence to official custom cannot long resist the force of public opinion. MtlUHAY AND 01MB, riUNTIlMS, KDIMniKUII.