An analysis of medical evidence : comprising directions for practitioners in the view of becoming witnesses in courts of justice, and an appendix of professional testimony / By John Gordon Smith, M.D.

  • John Gordon Smith
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An analysis of medical evidence : comprising directions for practitioners in the view of becoming witnesses in courts of justice, and an appendix of professional testimony / By John Gordon Smith, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    The slender extracts I can possibly introduce here, may not illustrate all these points; but I defy any one to peruse the details of a French trial, without finding proofs of some of them. I believe it may be asserted, that the jjroces Castaing at large will afford examples of them all. After an act of accusation, (a very different ai'ticle from an indictment, being a minute history of every thing connected with the allegations, and fraught witli observations and inferences, which an English counsel for the crown would hardly venture to introduce in a speech,) of such length that its recital must have been enough to Aveary all who heard it, the presiding judge proceeds to interrogate the prisoner, beginning with questions relative to his connexion with the objects of his alleged criminal proceedings. I shall select a few, here and there. Q. What motive could Hipjjolt/te have for refusing to see his sister ? I do not know *. — Have you not made poisons the object of study ? Yes, as belonging to the materia mcdica.—Did you not ask an apothecary some questions concerning the effects of vegetable poisons ? 1 do not remember. — You know, at least, that such poisons leave no traces in the body, and that, in medical language, they may pass in the stream of the circulation. Are you acquainted with that property ? Answer ? Yes, Sir. Q. Hippolyte died on the 5th of October. A death of such a sud- den nature must have surprised you. To what did you attribute it ? To some more important accident having happened to the lungs.—That is not your former declaration. You said that he died of congestion of the brain, arising from a fluxion of the breast, which appeared to be the case on dissection ? I thought you asked me what my opinion had been, prior to the dissection.—You were present at the dissection, and you are asvare that Segalas and Lkerminier, the physicians, stated that some of the derangements in the organs might be caused by certain poisons. [This was not followed by any remark on the part of the pri- soner.] The examination turning upon the afl^air of the property, I pass to matters more allied to the scientific merits of the case, in which we shall have ample exemplifications of the nature of French testimony. It would almost seem to be the custom, if not the law, to hang a culprit for making mistakes in criminating himself, or at the worst, for telling lies ^. * A strange idea of the nature of evidence—to ask one person as to the motives of another ! Who could speak to such a point? Another circumstance, I cannot avoid alluding to, is the declara- tions of persons not sworn being received — the declarations of the prosecuting parties. See the examination of M. JUartignon, the bro- ther-in-law of the deceased. f For example : — The judge says, Yesterday you admitted that the will had been placed by you in the hands o( Malassis. Why did you deny that repeatedly at first ? Because it was dangerous for me to B B