Medico-legal risks encountered by medical practitioners in the practice of their profession / by John Glaister.

  • John Glaister
Date:
[1886?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medico-legal risks encountered by medical practitioners in the practice of their profession / by John Glaister. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    rPSDonsible . . It was impossible, added the learned to define in words what was 'gjoss' or 'culpable' Sfience It must depend upon the judgment of the jury in all the circumstances. In view of this it is quite possible that a medical man might examine a supposed lunatic,, and, in doing so exercise reasonable care and make due enquiry, sufficient to satisfy his own mind that the person was of unsound mind._ He might further say that he acted hond fide m his examination, that he conscientiously attempted to do the right, and that he did his best in that attempt; but on the case being sented to a iury, the care and enquiry used by him together with the bond Mes and the doing of his best, might tail to satisfy the iury and his honest error in judgment might be construed into the signing of a false certificate wilfully and mahciously, for the ve?dict would be against him, and he would be cast m damao-es If you add to this the fact, that the person whose sanity is in question personally conducts his or her own case and that skilfully, there is contributed a greater possibihty ot such a decision. In the second case, where the evidence pointed so strongly ao-ainst the plaintiff's sanity, and where the summing' up ot the learned judge was strongly for the defendants, the tact that it took two hours for the jury to return a verdict m accordance, gives us an index to the feelings rankling m the minds of an ordinary jury. It shows, it seems to me,_ that there must be some feeling of antagonism, involuntarily it may be, in the popular mind against those whose certificates of insanity have been called in question. And it is not astonishing that, as a result of the verdict in the case Weldon V. Semple, some practitioners have gone the length of declar- ing that, from now and henceforth, they have ceased to sign certificates of lunacy, and, further, have suggested that all medical men should cease so to do until the law shall have laid down more clearly and precisely the responsibilities attaching thereto. Now that the question of Lunacy Reform is again pushing itself to the front so vigorously, and when such a prominent legal authority as Mr. Justice Hawkins declares that the law, in the state in which it was, must be calculated to fill everybody who contemplated it with terror and alarm, and that he hoped the law upon the subject would be altered, it behoves the medical profession to take a part in that reform movement. Every member of our profession, when called upon to B
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