The principles of forensic medicine, systematically arranged, and applied to British practice.

  • John Gordon Smith
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of forensic medicine, systematically arranged, and applied to British practice. 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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    which our profession enjoys*. Others however contend for the propriety of studying the economy of administration in the different courts, in order that we may discharge our duty before a tribunal with competent abihty. I shall not stop to enquire whether a practitioner might not speak the truth as intelligibly, in what relates to physic, without having ever known the purport of a single act of parlia- ment, and perhaps serve the cause of justice with equal effect, as the physician who may have dili- gently perused the Commentaries of Blackstone, or the best text books in the science of law; but I may confidently assert, that he will discharge this part of his duty, if not with better success, at least with greater pleasure and credit to himself, and more satisfactorily to others, if he becomes familiar with the import of the duty he has to discharge. It is somewhat different from that of healing the sick. It is a complaint, says Dr. Percival, made by coroners, magistrates, and judges, that medical gentlemen are often reluctant in the performance of the offices required of them as citizens qualified by professional knowledge to aid the execution of public justice. These offices, it must be con- fessed, are generally painful, always inconvenient, and occasion an interruption to business, of a * Discourse on the Study of Law, prefixed to Blackstone's Analysis of the Laws of England. He immediately adds a recommendation to make ourselves acquainted with ihe forma- lities of last wills and testaments.
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