FIGS. 36, 37. Illustrating Change through the Effect of Disease.... 194 FIG. 38. Growth of Hair, with reference to Race Type..... FIG. 39. Schematic Figure showing the Different Thumb Tip Types of Galton and the Disposition of the Papillary Lines... 205 FIG. 40. Impression of the Right Thumb-Schematic. (Testut.)... 205 FIG. 41. Caussé's Method for Identifying Footprints. FIGS. 42-50. Noses Classified according to Bridge and Base. (Ber- FIGS. 51-59. Classification of Foreheads. (Bertillon.)............ 210 FIG. 60. Some Classifications of the Form of the Ear. (Bertillon.) 211 FIGS. 61-64. Powder Tattoo-Marks made by Revolver at Various FIG. 65. Mrs. Billings's Skull. Point of Entrance of Ball FIG. 66. Mrs. Billings's Skull. Hole made by Piece of Bone, being PAGE FIG. 71. Blood-clot from Right Middle Meningeal Artery, effused between Bone and Dura-Mater. (Mechanicsville Case.).. 268 FIG. 75. Ordinary Reduction-Tube, with Charcoal Splinter........ 373 FIG. 76. Special Reduction-Tube, when Flux is used, drawn out after Mixture is inserted.... FIG. 77. Marsh's Apparatus FIG. 78. Ignition-Tube, for Berzelius-Marsh Test ... FIG. 79. Arsenic Deposits in the Berzelius-Marsh Test FIG. 80. Crystals of Morphine from Stomach. Magnified 18 diam 373 375 376 377 445 FIG. 81. Crystals of Strychnine Chromate. Magnified 80 diameters. 455 FIG. 82. Crystals of Strychnine from Stomach. Magnified 12 diam eters 456 FIG. 83. Strychnine from Stomach. Magnified 40 diameters...... 457 INTRODUCTION. MEDICAL jurisprudence, or legal medicine, may be defined as the science which applies the principles and practice of the different branches of medicine to the elucidation, in judicial proceedings, and subject to legal rules and forms, of questions relating to the cause or time of death, conception and birth, or the cause or effect upon the legal status of individuals of mental or physical disease or injuries. The questions which are included in this definition have been divided into five classes, the first of which includes inquiries arising out of the relations of sex, as impotence and sterility, pregnancy, legitimacy, and rape; the second, injuries inflicted on the living organism, as infanticide, wounds, poison, injuries, and death from violence; the third, questions arising out of disqualifying diseases, as the different forms of mental alienation; the fourth, those arising out of deceptive practices, as feigned diseases; fifth, questions of a miscellaneous nature, as age, identity, presumption of seniority, and life assurance. Of course the means or instrumentalities by which the principles and practice of medicine are applied to the elucidation of questions of law are the utterances of persons skilled in medicine, to wit, of physicians, surgeons, and chemists. These utterances, whether oral or written, are made use of in courts of justice, subject to certain rules which have been adopted as best calculated to correct or assist the infirmities of the human character, mind, and memory. In a general way the evidence given by medical and chemical experts has been classed as "opinion" evidence that is to say, as evidence which consists in the expert giving the conclusions which he, as a scientific man, draws from certain facts which have been, or are supposed to have been, proved. But owing to the progress of the science of medieine, and as the result of the modern scientific methods of investigation with accurate results, medicine and chemistry have become more worthy to be classed as exact sciences, and much of the testimony of physicians which formerly might rightly have been classed as pure matter of opinion is now as much a statement of matter of fact as a statement of the law of gravity, or the fact that the earth moves around the sun. And while it is to a large extent still true-as was laid down in a case in New York which established the proposition that the law does not recognize any particular class or school of practitioners as qualified experts to the exclusion of other classes or schools-that medicine is not an exact science in which truths have become established and fixed, but that, on the contrary, it has been characterized in a greater degree by fluctuation of opinion as to its principles and the mode of practice than perhaps any other pursuit, and has been distinguished by the constant promulgation and explosion of theories, and that the popular axiom that doctors differ is as true now as it ever was, still, on the other hand, there has been, ever since the discovery of the circulation of the blood, a steady progression in medicine toward the establishment of an increasing collection of fundamental and precise scientific facts, which are almost as reliable, as premises, as any of the facts in nature of which courts have for many years taken judicial notice without proof. This is especially true of that division of medicine which is known as pathology as distinguished from therapeutics, and in which the modern scientific school of medicine has made such wonderful discoveries, by means of methods of demonstration and proof which have raised the results out of the domain of controversy. Nor is the complaint which Bacon made in the seventeenth century— that the science of medicine had departed from the true path trod by Hippocrates, who used to set down a narrative of the special cases of his patients, and how they proceeded, and how they were judged by recovery or death-any longer applicable; for to-day a large part of the science of medicine consists, like the profession of the law, in studying and reporting new cases and decisions for the direction of future judgments. It is his learning and experience, drawn from the "myriad of single instances," which qualify the medical expert and gives his opinion, in the specific instance in issue, gravity and weight. In the actual practice of medicine it is still true, as of old, that the physician is judged to a great degree by the recovery or not of his patient, either of which results may be due to a hundred causes other than the skill or ability or incompetence of the physician; but in forensic medicine the expert is judged by the knowledge and learning evinced in his testimony, and not by the result of the trial. And in these days of criticism and belittling of expert testimony on the grounds that it consists of bought opinion, it is well to bear in mind the remark of that prince of practical philosophers, Dr. Johnson, who, when Sir James Johnston said that he paid no attention to arguments of counsel at the bar of the House of Commons because they were paid for speaking, replied: "Nay, sir, argument is argument. You cannot help paying regard to their arguments if they are good." And so in the case of expert testimony, if the opinion or argument of the expert appears sound and weighty, and to be based on sound premises, it is no answer to the impression it may make upon the minds of the hearers that the expert was paid for testifying. Although the principles of medical science were applied to the determination of certain legal questions by the Greeks and Romans, there is nowhere any authoritative mention of such a procedure in actual trials. There is some doubt whether in Roman criminal trials the accused was himself allowed to call any witnesses in his own behalf except as to his general character. Mr. Trollope, in his Life of Cicero, says that he was not. There does not seem to be any allusion either in the Digest or the Theodosian Code to insanity, or any form of mental alienation, as a defense to prosecution for erime; but we know that the subject was fully recognized under the system of Roman jurisprudence, and that insane persons were regarded as having no intelligent will, and as therefore being incapable of having rights or responsibilities, and that their persons and property were placed, after due investigation by magistrates, |