in England, is by Mr. Chitty, the celebrated and voluminous legal author, entitled, "A Practical Treatise on Medical Jurisprudence, with so much of the Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, and the Practice of Medicine and Surgery, as are essential to be known by Members of Parliament, Lawyers, Coroners, Magistrates, Officers in the Army and Navy, and Private Gentlemen, and all the Laws relating to Medical Practitioners, with explanatory Plates, Part I.

I feel it due to the profession to which I have the honour to belong, to state, that the present part of his work is almost entirely medical, anatomical, physiological, and pathological, with some legal references; all admirably arranged and executed, and most instructive to non-medical readers. It is a valuable treatise, and one well calculated to interest the legislature, the legal profession, the magistracy, and private individuals, and cannot fail to advance the interests of medical jurisprudence and state medicine.

In the preceding sketch of the history of MEDICAL JURISprudence and STATE MEDICINE, I have necessarily confined myself to our monographic and systematic writers on the subject; and I deemed it a digression to allude to all essayists, and to those who have elucidated certain parts of it. Among these are the late Professor Duncan, of Edinburgh, the first public lecturer on medical jurisprudence in this country, whose valuable essays and reviews in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, have contributed largely to advance the science in this country. His successor, Professor Christison, has given us a work on Toxicology, that will transmit his name to the latest posterity, as one of the most laborious, erudite, and experienced medical jurists that this or any country has produced. This work appeared in 1829, entitled, "A Treatise on Poisons, in relation to Medical Jurisprudence, Physiology, and Practice of Physic," the third edition of which is lately published.

The medico-legal writers in the Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine, and in our numerous medical periodicals, have also elucidated many questions of forensic medicine, and are entitled to much praise for their contributions. I shall briefly allude to the writers in the Cyclopædia of Medicine in alphabetical order-Dr. Apjohn, of Dublin, on Spontaneous Combustion and Toxicology; Dr. Arrowsmith, of Coventry, on Infanticide; Dr. Beatty, of Dublin, on Impotence, Persons found Dead, Rape, Doubtful Sex, Survivorship, and Death after Wounds; and Dr. Montgomery, of Dublin, on Personal Identity, on the Signs of Pregnancy and Delivery, and on Legitimacy.

There are numerous other recent writers in the French Medical Dictionaries, Dictionnaire de Medecine et de Chirurgie Pratiques, and the Dictionnaire de Medecine, in the American Cyclopædia of the Medical Sciences, and in the celebrated German Dictionary of Medicine, Encyclopädisches Wörterbuch der Medicinischen Wissenchaft, now in course of publication. The Traité des Exhumations Juridiques, and the Leçons de Chimie appliquée à la Medicine Pratique et à la Medicine Legale, by M. Orfila, 1836, and Nouvelles Rescherches, sur les Secours à donner aux Noyés et Asphyxiés, by M. Marc, 1936, are valuable additions to medico-legal literature.

PART I.

MEDICAL ETHICS.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF MEDICINE-VENERATION FOR ITS CULTIVATORS.

ALL medicine is derived from God, and without his will it cannot exist or be practised. Hence the healing art, if disunited from religion, would be impious or nothing. Illness requires us to implore the Deity for assistance and relief, and humbles human pride. The seeds of the art, the wonderful cures, and the powers of remedies, are in the hand of God. He has beneficently supplied various remedies, and pronounces with our tongues, the fate, life and death, of man. Whence, we see the dignity of medicine, and what reverence is due to the Divine Author of it. Sacred history confirms this sentiment, "Every cure is from God." "The Most High created medicines out of the earth." Every thing we enjoy are the gifts of God: none but the impious ever doubted this truth; nonę but fools dared to deny it.

It is recorded that Jesus, the son of Sirach, was one of the first who attributed the origin of medicine to the Deity. And we also read in Scripture, "Honour the physician for the need thou hast of him, for the Lord hath created him."

"All medicine is from God, and without him it cannot exist or prosper; our art, disunited from religion, is either impious or nothing." Such is the first precept in the moral statutes of the Italian Universities, and it is that of Roderic a Castro, in his Medico-Politica, and of the profession in all

countries.

The fate of the sick and the success of medicines are in

* "Oninis medicina a Deo est. Cœlitus delapsa non sine Dei consilio vivit agitque. Hinc ars nostra sine religione, vel impia vel nihil.”—La Politica del Medico nell' esercizio dell' arte sua. Dal celebre Alessandro Knipps Macoppe, Professore di Medicina nell' J. R. Università di Padova. Milano, 1826.