Volume 1

Medical jurisprudence, forensic medicine and toxicology / by R.A. Witthaus and Tracy C. Becker ; with the collaboration of August Becker [and others].

Date:
1894-1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical jurisprudence, forensic medicine and toxicology / by R.A. Witthaus and Tracy C. Becker ; with the collaboration of August Becker [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    icine extends over so wide a field of inquiry as to require treatment at the hands of specialists was first recognized. To Josef von Maschka, professor in the University of Prague, the credit is due of having been the first to produce, with the col- laboration of twenty-two colleagues, a truly systematic work on modern forensic medicine.' English works upon this subject did not exist prior to the present century, although physicians were employed by the courts to determine medical questions of fact at a much earlier date. Paris and Fonblanque, in the third Appendix of their Medical Jurisprudence, give the text of reports by the Colleges of Physicians of London and of Edinburgh concerning the cause of death as early as 1632 and 1687 respectiveljr.^ Lectures on medical jurisprudence were given at the Uni- versity of Edinburgh by A. Duncan, Sr., at least as early as 1792.'' The title of Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in a British university was conferred for the first time, however, upon A. Duncan, Jr., at the University of Edinburgh in 1806.' The first English work on medical jurisprudence worthy of consideration is the medical classic known as Percival's Med- ical Ethics. This was first published in 1803, and contains in ^ Handb. d. ger. Med., Tubin- gen, 1881-83, 4 vols. - Daniel: Bibl. d. Staatsarznk., Halle, 1784, No. 107, mentions: E. Prat, Rationarium chirurgi- cum, Oder nothwendiges Handbuch des Wundarztes, wie er Bericht an die Obrigkeit thun sollu. s. w., aus dem Engl., Hamb., 1684. 4, 690. 8. The same title is reproduced by AVildberg (No. 239) in 1819, and the edition of 1684 is mentioned by Ploucquet, Initia (1803), Suppl. iv., 36, and Litt. med. dig. (1809), iii., 54, the name of the au- thor being given as Pratt (Elias). This may be an early work by Ellis Pratt, but we can find no mention of it elsewhere. In the years 1734, 1761, and 1787 dissertations on abor- tion were defended at Edinburgh by Arnot, Harris, and Murray. Three treatises on death from suffo- cation by Goodwyn, Frank, and Coleman appeared in 1788-91. In 1788 S. Farr published at London his Elements of Medical Jurispru- dence, to which Percival (Med. Ethics,Oxford, 1849, p. 102) justly refers as a valuable epitome of S. F. Faselii's Elementa Medicinae Forensis [Regiom., 4to, 1787], in English by Dr. Farr. 3 Med. Jur., iii., p. 226 seq. Report that Joseph Lane died of poi- son (1623). Report that Sir James Standsfield was strangled and not drowned, with account of autopsy (1687). Also extracts from the medical evidence in the cases of Spencer Cowper (from 13 Howell's State Trials) ; Mary Blandy (Ox- ford, 1752) ; John Donellan (War- wick, 1781) ; and R. S. Donnall (Launceston, 1817). Heads of Lectures on Medical Jurisprudence, or the Institutiones Medicinae legalis, vi., 24 pp., 8vo, Edinb., 1792. ' See Beck : Med. Jur., 7th ed., xvi., and note.