CHAPTER I. LAWS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH MEDICAL POLICE-STATE MEDICINE-PUBLIC HYGIENE. ALL governments have framed laws, for the conservation of public health. The laws enacted for this purpose, are dispersed through the statutes of all civilized countries. Medical and statistical topography, public hygiene, civil, military, naval, and legal medicine, are established by law, for the preservation of the lives and health of the people. The history of public hygiene can be traced to the earliest age. It embraces a vast number of subjects:- the history of man, of society, of the arts, sciences, of the various pursuits, of climate, of physiology, and pathology; and all agents, beneficial or injurious to human health. Every civilized government legislates for the conservation, education, and amelioration of the species. It supports armies and navies, for the protection of national happiness, or for the defence of the whole population. It establishes civil powers for the protection of certain portions of society; it regulates the localities of towns and cities, according to medical advice, for the preservation of the health of the inhabitants; and it endeavours to confine or extinguish endemic, epidemic, and contagious diseases. The laws relating to public hygiene may be traced to the remotest antiquity. "The origin of positive laws, " says Foderè, in an unpublished memoir, addressed to the Council of Health of Paris, in 1817, "was deduced from the observations made on mankind, by physicians and philosophers. Many laws inserted in the sacred works of the people of Israel the codes of the ancient Egyptians, in which medicine and the priesthood, united supreme power, that part of the Roman laws, called royal laws, the laws that the decemviri extracted from the Athenians, those which were successively added by the emperors Vespasian, Titus, Severus, Marcus Aurelius, Adrian, &c. contain the motives that decide many legislative enactments; the authority of Aristotle and Hippocrates worked incessantly: these and many other laws were the source from which emanated the first ties of human society. This source was not forgotten by the church or by Justinian, when the Roman empire was converted to Christianity; it was compelled to adapt its laws to the principles of the new religion; and this prince undertook to reconcile the different contradictions, and to re-unite, in one code, the doctrine of the different laws. It is in his code, that the different dispositions which still influence many countries, will be found, relative to marriage, the period of delivery, and divers other questions, of the greatest interest to man, in civil and criminal jurisprudence. This was the first time, that written laws established the necessity of the intervention of physicians, as witnesses and arbitrators in medico-legal questions. Toraqeau, a learned jurisconsult said, "that the science of the laws and of medicine were united in so intimate an alliance, that it would be proper for the jurisconsult to be also a physician." The constitution of Charles V., established in 1552, ordered the tribunals to consult physicians in cases of homicide, infanticide, poisoning, wounds, abortion, &c. It is from this epoch that legal medicine dates its origin. It first commenced in Germany and in Italy, by the collection of a code of facts relative to the subject, which, properly appreciated, had great influence on public morals and the general welfare. The enactments of Henry III. of France, contained several admirable regulations, relative to the reports made in courts of justice, by physicians and surgeons. Since the time of these enactments, the French legislature has never varied on the necessity of the intervention of physicians and surgeons in several cases of jurisprudence; but what has varied, and what has never been well defined, is the competency of the person, who ought to be consulted in such or such a case, in preference to another." This quotation proves, that in the ancient and modern governments, the evidence of medical practitioners has been regarded as necessary to legislators and judges both in civil and criminal jurisprudence. Medical Police, Political Medicine, State Medicine, Public Hygiene, Police of Health, comprise the acts of a legislature, a government, and magistracy, for the conservation of public health, and for the enactment of laws for the regulation of the practice of the medical profession, and the duty of medical practitioners in aiding the legislature and public tribunals in forming just laws, and in the administration of justice. The principal subjects under this head on which medical evidence is required, are, according to Dr. Gordon Smith, the following: 1. Ages.-Characteristics and import of the several gradations in the period of human life, from the hour of birth to its natural decay, and final extinction; comprehending many circumstances relative to physical education, exercise, and other points of management. 2. Marriage and population.—The proper period and subjects for the former, with the influence of these considerations on the welfare of descendants-fecundity, mortality, &c. as questions of state importance. 3. General or national manners.—Their influence on health. 4. Air, food, and drink.-Importance of their purity and wholesomeness-including the medico-legal consideration of nuisances, adulterations, public cleanliness, ventilation, regulations for markets, slaughter-houses, burial-grounds, &c. 5. Public buildings for numerous inmates. As manufactories, barracks, prisons, hospitals, ships, &c. as regards ventilation, warmth, economy, discipline, labour, &c. &c. 6. Topography.—Comprehending climate, meteorology, soil, productions, &c. of countries and particular neighbourhoods. 7. Clothing and dwelling-places. 8. Employment and management of the poor, in order to preserve them from disease. 9. Contagious, epidemic, and endemic diseases.-Enumeration and history of the prevalent varieties; measures to be adopted to prevent their breaking out, or to arrest their progress. |