both sexes, were burnt alive in fifteen years for the imputed crime of sorcery; and that, in the Electorate of Treves alone, within a few years, six thousand five hundred individuals had perished in the flames for the same imaginary crime. In various parts of Germany and France, instances of supposed demoniacal possession were perpetually occurring; and at Freidberg public prayers were ordered to assuage this dire calamity. Weiher, physician to William, Duke of Cleves, had the boldness openly to impugn these superstitious notions, in a curious work entitled, De Præstigiis Dæmonum et Incantationibus, printed at Basil, in 1568. He undertook to prove, that magicians and demoniacs ought to be considered as unfortunate persons, subject to hysteria and hypochondriasis, and that they should rather excite pity for their infirmities, than be obnoxious to punishment; and he ridiculed the ordinary modes of persecution to which these unhappy beings were subjected.

This attack on a popular superstition, and on a powerful and lucrative engine of clerical influence, aroused alike indignation and vengeance against the daring innovator; and Weiher was himself arrested as a magician, dragged before a tribunal, and owed his liberty and life to the influence and earnest solicitations of his ducal patron. Weiher was too enlightened for the age in which he flourished; for we find his opinions attacked in no measured terms by two of his contemporaries, Erastus and Scribonius.*

The belief in diabolical illusions and witchcraft was entertained in this country so late as the seventeenth century. Sir Thomas Browne, the author of the Religio Medici, who was called on by Lord Chief Baron, Sir Matthew Hale, to give evidence in the cases of two unfortunate persons indicted for having bewitched two children, and caused them to have fits, who were tried and executed at Bury St. Edmonds; deposed, "He was clearly of opinion that the fits were natural, but heightened by the devil, co-operating with the malice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villanies," and he added, "that in Denmark there had been lately a great discovery of witches who used the very same way of inflicting persons by conveying pins into them." This relation of Sir Thomas Browne, says the historian of the case, made that good and great man, Sir Matthew Hale, doubtful; but he would not so much as sum up the evidence, but left it to the jury with prayers that the great God of heaven would direct their

* Erasti Disputatio de Lamiis. Basil, 1572. garum Natura et Potestate. Helmstadt, 1584.

4to. Scribonius de Sa4to.

hearts in that weighty matter. The jury accordingly returned a verdict of guilty; and the executions were amongst the latest instances of the kind that disgrace the English annals.

Sir Thomas Browne was born in 1605, was a celebrated physician in London in 1646, and was knighted by Charles II.

The publication of the Caroline Code very naturally attracted the attention of the medical profession, and many of its members commenced the study of forensic medicine. The kings of France soon felt the necessity of a similar code. In 1556, Henry II. promulgated a law, by the virtue of which death was inflicted on any woman who concealed her pregnancy, and destroyed her offspring. In 1606, Henry IV. presented letters patent to his first physician, authorizing him to appoint two surgeons in every city and important town, whose exclusive duty it should be to examine all wounded or murdered persons, and make reports thereon. This law was amended by Louis XIV. in 1667, who declared that no report should be received, unless sanctioned by one of these surgeons. These were named medical councillors to the king, they were often appointed by court intrigue, and became so corrupt that they were suppressed in 1790. There are still, however, district medical reporters in France, as will appear hereafter. (Foderè op. cit.) In 1692, physicians were associated with

surgeons.

Various detached treatises on different branches of legal medicine appear to have been produced towards the close of the 16th century. Ambrose Paré wrote on monstrous births, simulated diseases, and on the art of drawing up medicolegal reports, 1575. In 1598 Severin Pineace (or Pinæus) published at Paris his treatise De notis Integritatis et Corruptionis Virginum; a book still quoted on that subject.

The earliest systematic work on legal medicine is unquestionably the book De Relationibus Medicorum of Fortunato Fidele, published in 1598 in Sicily. As might be expected in his age and country, the opinions of this physician are greatly warped by his servile deference to the dicta of the canon law, and his submission to its clerical expounders. It consists of four books, of which the following may be received as an outline of the contents, viz. I. On Public Food; the Salubrity of the Air; Pestilence. II. Wounds; Pretended Diseases; Torture; Injuries of the Muscles; Medical Errors. III. Virginity; Impotence; Hereditary Diseases ; Pregnancy; Moles; the Vitality of the Foetus; On Birth; Monsters. IV. Life and Death; Mortality of Wounds: Suffocation; Death by Lightning and Poisoning.

The rapid progress of anatomy in the commencement of the 17th century, by the labours of Sylvius, Vesalius, Fallopius, and Eustachius, had a surprising influence on the progress of medico-legal investigations, which became speedily apparent in the publication of the great and invaluable Questiones Medico Legales of Paulo Zacchia; which appeared in successive volumes from 1621 to 1635.

Zacchia was one of the most eminent physicians of Italy. His celebrity brought a vast body of facts on medical jurisprudence under his cognizance; and his work, which has gone through many editions, is still regarded as the great magazine of medico-legal lore, illustrated by immense erudition, and by a subtile and refined discrimination. Though Zacchia be tinctured with the superstition of his age, in what relates to demoniacal possession, and some other subjects, yet his judicious remarks on the gross injustice and impropriety of classing as demoniacs those females in whom suppressed catamenia had produced mania, or men in whom frenzy had originated in a melancholic temperament, place his physiological reasoning and his medical indications in a favourable point of view; and, perhaps, we ought to place his recommendation in such cases, not to neglect the prayers of the church, while suitable remedies are prescribed, as much to his anxiety to avoid offence, as to his faith in the efficacy of the former.

With the imperfections that were unavoidable in an age in which physiology was in its infancy, chemistry imperfect, and ere our illustrious countryman Harvey had demonstrated the circulation of the blood, the work of Zacchia will ever be considered as one of the landmarks of medical jurisprudence, and remain a stupendous monument of his learning and sagacity. It was written at different times; abounds in repetitions, and occasionally in contradictions; circumstances which render it better suited for the consultation of the learned than the information of the student.

The following is an outline of the contents of the first volume. First Book: Age; Legitimacy; Pregnancy; Superfetation and Moles; Death during Delivery; Resemblance of Children to their Parents. Second Book: Dementia ; Poisoning. Third Book: Impotence; Feigned Diseases; The Plague and Contagion. Fourth Book : Miracles; Rape. Fifth Book : Fasting; Wounds; Mutilation; Salubrity of Air, &c. The second volume is filled with casuistical questions. This work is highly esteemed as one of great authority. Zacutus Lusitanus, in alluding to its value, exclaims: emi, vidi, legi, obstupui. It is justly considered the most celebrated of all the Italian works on the subject.

The next important step in the history of our science is due to Harvey, who investigated the difference between the lungs of the fœtus and of an infant that had breathed, and pointed out how this fact might be available in alleged cases of infanticide. It should, however, be admitted, that long before, the difference in colour, consistence, and weight, between the foetal and adult lungs of animals, had been remarked by Galen, but who had not applied it to any practical use.

Almost at the same time appeared two valuable treatises by Melchior Sebiz, at Strasburg, viz. De Notis Virginitatis (1630) and Examen Vulnerum (1638). In the first he maintained that the existence of the hymen was the indisputable mark of virginity; an inference which was warmly denied by Orazio Augenio, and defended by the celebrated Pietro Gassendi (Opera VI.), &c. In the second he drew an important distinction between wounds necessarily fatal, and those which become so incidentally.

We must give the next important step to the Danish physician, Thomas Bartholin, who carefully investigated the period of human utero-gestation; and, having confirmed the opinions of Galen and Harvey, respecting the difference between the lungs before and after the first respiration, proposed the hydrostatic test for solving the question, and pointed out the best method of rendering it available in medico-legal investigations. (De Pulmonum substantia et Motu. Hafniæ 1663). The rationale of this process was more fully explained by Swammerdam in a tract, published at Leyden, in 1677and its first practical application was made in 1682, by Jan Schreyer, after it had been investigated by Thurston and Carl Rayger.

This process is the celebrated Docimasia Pulmonum ; which, till within a comparatively recent period, was considered as an irrefragable test of the question whether or not the child had breathed; but which has given rise to a keen controversy which I shall have afterwards an opportunity of examining. See Infanticide. About this period the work of Ambrose Paré, published 1575, which was regarded for nearly a century the only standard authority in France, was superseded by the more comprehensive treatises of Gendri, of Angers, in 1650, of Blegni, of Lyons, in 1684, and of Devereux, of Paris, in 1693. Louis is, however, with great justice, considered as the first who promulgated a just idea of the science to his countrymen. He flourished about the middle of the last century, and will be noticed in the history of that period.

While these important steps were in progress, Germany, the country where medical jurisprudence took its rise, had

instituted public prelections on this important branch of medical and forsenic education. About the middle of the 17th century, Michaëlis gave the first lectures on this subject at Leipsic, which were followed by those of Bohn, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in that city, who, before the end of that century, had published his valuable works De Vulnerum Renunciatione, and Dissertationes Medicine Forensis (1689), and these were speedily followed by a tract De officio Medici duplici, Clinico et Forensi (1704). In the same period appeared the interesting investigations of Gottfried Welsch, and of P. Amann, on the fatality of wounds.* The celebrated work of Licetus, De Monstris, appeared in 1669 at Amsterdam; and it would be unpardonable to omit the vast accessions to medico-legal knowledge unfolded in that noble pathological collection, the Sepulchretum of Bonnet. (Lugd. 1700, 3 tom. folio). The mode of conducting medico-legal investigations obtained some attention in France during the seventeenth century, but its institutions were extremely imperfect compared to those of Germany even to a much later period.

The following were among the German authors of the 18th century John Bohn, De Renunciatione Vulnerum, 1689, 4to. Amsterdam. Valentini, Pandecta Medico-Legales, 4to. Francof. 1702. Fred. Boerner, Prof. Med. Wirtemburg, 1723. Several Dissertations. Kannegeiser, Inst. Med. Leg. Michael Alberti, Prof. Med. Hall.-Systema Jurisprudentiæ Medica Schneeberg, 4to. 1725. tom. vi. Zittman, Medicina Forensis, 4to. Francofurti. Richter, Decisiones MedicoForenses. Teichmeyer, Institutiones Med. Leg. 4to. Jenæ 1740. Stark, De Medicinæ Utilitate in Jurisprudentia, 4to. Helmont, 1730. Hebenstreit, Anthropologia Forensis, 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1753. Ludwig. Institutiones Medicinæ Forensis. Fazellius, Elementa Medicinæ Forensis.

The first German work of authority was Bohn's (1689), in which he attempted to discriminate what wounds were necessarily fatal. The next was Valentini's Pandects, 1702. Michele Bernardo Valentini published his Pandecta Medicolegales in 1702 (Francofurte), and his Novelle in 1711, which were incorporated, in 1722, into his Corpus Juris Medicolegale. This great work contains an excellent review of all that had been done before his time, and is considered by some as equal in value to the work of Zacchia. Valentini was fully aware of the importance of his subject, and strenuously insists,

Welschii Rationale Vulnerum Lethalium judicium, 1660. Ammanni Irenicum Numa Pompilii c. Hippocrate, 1698. Praxes Vulenrum Lethalium, 1701.