Volume 1

Medical jurisprudence, forensic medicine and toxicology / by R.A. Witthaus and Tracy C. Becker.

  • Rudolph August Witthaus
Date:
1894-1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical jurisprudence, forensic medicine and toxicology / by R.A. Witthaus and Tracy C. Becker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    more than a century before. Indeed, the earliest medico-legal work written by a physician ’ is the 27th book of the GEuvres d’Ambroise Pare, first printed in 1575, in which he directs the forms in which judicial reports shall be made in various medico-legal cases. During the remainder of the sixteenth century France produced but three treatises on medico-legal subjects. One of these, written by the jurist A. Hotman, distinctly mentions the employment of physicians to determine questions of fact. In Italy works on medical jurisprudence were published at the close of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth cen- tury. The earliest of these was a chapter of Codronchius, treating of the “method of testifying in medical cases,” in 1597.'* At about the same time, but certainly later, appeared the work of Fortunatus Fidelis, to whom the honor of being the first writer on medical jurisprudence is given by many. The great work of Paulus Zacchias, physician to Pope Inno- cent X., was first printed at Rome, 1621-35. This medico- legal classic contains in the first two volumes the “ Qiicestiones” and in the third the decisions of the Roman Rota. It treats of ’ Wildberg, “Bibl. Med.-for.,” Berl., 1819, Nos. 553, 554, 1,124, 1,125, 1,126, 1,304, 1,835, 1,836, 2,342, cites nine works earlier than 1575. These are, however, mono- graplis on the period of gestation, witchcraft, fasting girls, drunken- ness, and wounds of the head. Works on toxicology were written at a much earlier date : tlie Qr/piaKd and Ale^i^dppaKa, of Nicander, ca. B.c. 135; the irepl dTj’hjTTjpiuv <f>appd- K(jv, of Dioscorides, ca. a.d. 50 ; the treatises, “De Venenis,” of Petrus de Abbano (ca. a.d. 1250), first printed Mantua, 1472; of Amoldus da Villanova (ca. a.d. 1300), first printed {sine loc. et an.) ca. 1470 ; of Santes deArdoynis, Venice, 1492, and of F. Ponzetti, Venice, 1492, are among the earliest. Works on toxicology are not considered in this Introduction, the historical sketch of that science being reserved for a later volume. Ed. Malgaigne, 1840, t. iii., 1. xxvii., pp. 651-658; ed. princ.. Pans, 1.575, fol.,pp. 931-944. On the title-page of an earlier work. printed in 1562, Pare is referred to as “chirurgien ordinaire du Roi, et Jure a Paris. ” Ploucquet, “ Lib. Med. dig.,” Tiib., 1809, iv., 349, mentions a monograph by “ Tygeon, Th.,” printed at Lyons, 1575. ^ S. Pineau : “ De notis Integritatis et Corruptionis Virginum,” Paris, 1598 ; A. Hotman ; “ De la Dissolu- tion du Mariage par I’Impuissance, ” etc., Paris, 1581; delaCorde, “Ergo Virgo . . . lac in mammis habere potest,” Paris, 1580. Wildberg, 1. c., Nos. 555, 1,308, 1,309, are not properly medico-legal. ‘‘In his “De Vitiis Vocis, ” etc., Fi'ankf., 1597. He had previously published a treatise, “De morbis veneficis ac veneficiis, ” Venet., 1595. ^“De relationibus medicorum . . . in quibus ea omnia quae in forensibusac publicis causis medioi referre solent, ” etc., Panormi, 1602. Mongitore, “Bibl. Sic.,” Panormi, 1707-14. i., 199, mentions an edition of 1598, Pan., under the title: “Bissus [Birrus?], sive med- icoriim patrocinium,” etc.