Volume 1

Taylor's principles and practice of medical jurisprudence / [Alfred Swaine Taylor].

  • Alfred Swaine Taylor
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Taylor's principles and practice of medical jurisprudence / [Alfred Swaine Taylor]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    it was held that her master was not liable to pay the surgeon’s bill (Cooper v. Phillips, 4 C. & P. 581). A master is bound to provide an apprentice with proper medicines and medical attendance (E. v. Smith, 8 C. & P. 153). [The Workmens’ Compensation Act, 1906, and the Insurance Act of 1911 have rendered these old decisions at least somewhat obsolete, but presumably they might still hold in a case where the servant was still for some reason uninsured.—Ed.] While a husband and wife are living together it is a presumption of fact that the wife is agent for, and has the authority of, her husband to pledge his credit for goods supplied to their establishment which are suited to her station. A wife has implied authority to bind her husband for reasonable expenses for medicines and medical attend¬ ance, incurred during illness, but this implied authority is put an end to if the husband has given sufficient notice that he will no longer be responsible for any debts which she may incur. In the Times Law Report for February 8, 1917, will be found an interesting case (Travers v. Sen.) bearing on the authority of a wife to pledge her husband’s credit for fees for her accouchement. The case was heard in the K.B. Div. and was an appeal from a decision of a County Court Judge. Justices Bailhache and Atkin held that she contracted only as an agent for her husband and that an action could, under the circumstances, be brought only against him and not against the wife, thus affirming the decision of the County Court Judge who had given his decision against the Doctor who had sued the wife. The following decided cases were quoted Paquin v. Beauclerk (22T.L.R. 395 [1906] A. C. 148) and Waithman v. Wakefield, 1 Camp, 121 ; Ruddock v. Marsh, 1 H. and N., 603 ; Edwards v. Towels, 5 M. and G., 624 ; Lush on Husband and Wife, 3rd Edition, 355-401 ; Debenham v. Mellon, 6 App. Cas., 24 ; Main warring v. Leslie, M. and M., 18. A medical man can recover professional charges according to a scale varying with the social position of patients visited, provided that the same be fair and reasonable. In all professional dealings between medical men and their patients the customs of the pro¬ fession will be considered as imported into the contract unless ex¬ cluded expressly or by implication.” REFERENCES The literature of forensic medicine is to be found scattered throughout the medical, surgical and public health journals and papers in different countries. Of special journals devoted more or less exclusively to the subject of forensic medicine and toxicology may be mentioned :— “ Annales d’hygiene publique et de medecine legale.” Paris. ‘Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle et des sciences penales.” Paris. “ Archiv fur Kriminal-Anthropologie und Kriminalstatistik.” Leipzig. “ Jahrbuch fiir sexuelle Zwischenstufen.” Leipzig. “ Friedreich’s Blatter fur gerichtliche Medicin und Sanitals-Polizei.” Niirnberg. “ Zeitschrift fiir Medicinalbeamte.” Berlin. “ Transactions of the Medico-legal Society.” London. “ The Medico-legal Journal.” New York. Vierteljahrsschrift fiir gerichtliche und offentliche Medicin.” Berlin.
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