The principles and practice of medical jurisprudence / by the late Alfred Swaine Taylor.

  • Alfred Swaine Taylor
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of medical jurisprudence / by the late Alfred Swaine Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    •a well-trained gentleman be appointed as a stipendiary judge in every county or boroiigh ; let liina, upon the same sources of information as are now open to the coroner, hold inquiries or not, according to bis judgment. There are many coroners who are quite competent to fill such an office. In each county, or district, there should be appointed a surgeon—skilled in the inspection of the dead body, and in a knowledge of the causes of death; and a chemist, skilled in the processes for the detection of poisons. To these three officers, and, if necessary, to assistants appointed by and under them, all inquiries into crimes connected with the death of persons should be exclusively remitted. Proper salaries for skilled surgeons and analysts would secure competent men, and probably turn out in the end to be less costly than the present system. Some such regulations as these must sooner or later be made if the public desire to have the duties of an important office properly performed. The value of life is said to be greater in England than in any other country ; but this remark applies only to cases of crime which are actually detected, and to the prosecution and punishment of criminals. We are greatly in- ferior to France and Germany in our means for the scientific detection of crime and murder by secret poisoning. In the case of Palmer (1856), there was evidence to show that his wife, his wife's mother, two of his children, his brother and one of his personal friends, had all died from poison under his roof, within two or three years before the death of Cook—for the murder of whom Palmer was tried and convicted. His wife had been poisoned by tartar emetic, and his brother by prussic acid. The deaths of at least two others in his house were probably violent. Where was the •coroner's inquest for the protection of life ? The initiation of proceedings is often placed in the hands of a police-constable or a coroner's beadle, instead of being directed by the public prosecutor. Inspections.—The necessity for appointing a skilled independent in- spector of bodies in all suspected cases demanding inquiry, will be apparent from other considerations. Palmer, a medical man, was thus allowed to be present at the inspection of the body of Cook. He nominated the persons, one of them an inexperienced young man who had never before inspected a body in a case of death from poison, and he stood over them while they were engaged in the office. The stomach of the deceased when received for analysis was cut open throughout its length. The injury to this organ, by which at least a portion of the contents were lost, occurred durmg the inspection, and is said to have arisen from Palmer having acci- dentally (as it was alleged) pushed against the youth who was making the inspection. After the viscera had been placed in a jar and secured with a bladder, Palmer found an opportunity of cutting the bladder with a knife and inverting the jai-, and this probably led to a further loss of the contents. In another case of exhumation, the viscera had been carefully removed and placed (as it was supposed) in separate jars, which were properly secured and labelled. When the jar labelled ' Stomach and Con- tents was opened by the analyst to whom it had been sent, it ivas found empty. J^rom inquiries subsequently made, there was but little doubt that a person who was mteipted in preventing an analysis was permitted to be present at the inspection, and that he had taken the opportunity, when the inspectors were otherwise occupied, of removing the stomach f rom the ]ar and again secretly returning it into the abdomen before the bodv was sewn up, or otherwise disposing of it. Acts of this kind would perhlps be impossible in the present day, but the best security against theiroccur! rence would be the appointment of a skilled inspector in a district to conduct all post-mortem examinations for coroners'inquests A charge of malapraxis is sometimes raised against a medical man in
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