A manual of medical jurisprudence, and state medicine : compiled from the latest legal and medical works, of Beck, Paris, Christison, Fodere, Orfila, etc. ... intended for the use of legislators, barristers, magistrates, coroners, private gentlemen, jurors, and medical practitioners / by Michael Ryan.
- Michael Ryan
- Date:
- 1836
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence, and state medicine : compiled from the latest legal and medical works, of Beck, Paris, Christison, Fodere, Orfila, etc. ... intended for the use of legislators, barristers, magistrates, coroners, private gentlemen, jurors, and medical practitioners / by Michael Ryan. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![on this opinion, and has influenced all legislators to the pre- sent period.* The above authorities also maintained, that pregnancy might be protracted beyond the ordinary term of nine months; which is now the received opinion of physiologists. Medical men, both among the Greeks and Romans, were consulted by the magistrates most frequently on questions of medical police^ as on the salubrity of cities, and on the means of assuaging the virulence of epidemic diseases : and to sub- jects of that nature the public fimctions of the Archiater, or state physician, were confined in the lower ages of the empire. That they were summoned to give evidence in a court of justice no where appears; and had they been called, their testi- mony, in ages when human anatomy was proscribed, must, in a majority of difficult cases, have been of comparatively little value. The laws of ancient Rome were chiefly enacted on the same grounds as those of Greece ; but they embraced more important medico-legal questions. In the reign of Numa Pompilius, before the Christian era, 600 years, and 14.0 before the time of Hippocrates, it was enacted, de inferendomortuo, {lex regia) that the bodies of all women who were in the last months of pregnancy, should be opened immediately after death, so that the infants might be saved if possible. History also informs us, that the elder Scipio Africanus, Marcus Manlius, and the first Csesar,-]- were brought into the world by incision of the abdomen, or gastro-hysterotomy; and hence the origin of the term, Csesarian operation. It was also enacted in the Twelve Tables, A. C. 452, that the infant in the mother's womb was to be considered as living, and all civil rights secured to it. The legitimacy of an infant was limited to 300 days after the death or absence of his putative father, or within ten months of the supposed time of impreg- nation ; but the period was afterwards extended to eleven months. Most of the Roman laws were framed in accordance with the opinions of the ancient philosophers and physicians, and many legal decisions were given; propter auctoritatem doctissimi Hippocratis. Several laws were constructed during the reign of Severus, Antonine, Adrian, and Aurelius, on the authority of Hippo- crates and Aristotle; the crime of procuring abortion was limited to those cases in which the foetus had exceeded forty days, as before that time it was not considered a living * The present law of this country awards a different punishment against the perpetrators of abortion before and after quickening. See Infanti- cide, t Plin. Hist. Nat L. vii.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21075864_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
