J. S. M. Fonblanque

“ While the intricate and perplexing subjects of quarantine and plague police, will require for their elucidation, the energies of a peculiarly constructed and well disciplined mind, to concentrate the genuine lights into a focus, and to dissipate the many specious, but false appearances, with which the question of contagion has been distorted. ”

“ Nor are the Censors liable to any action for error in judgment, for “though the Pills and Medicines were really Salubres Pilulæ et bona Medicamenta, yet no action lies against the Censors; because it is a wrong judgment in a matter within the limits of their jurisdiction, and a judge is not answerable, either to the king or the party, for the mistakes or errors of his judgment, in a matter of which he has jurisdiction: it would expose the justice of the nation, and no man would execute the office upon peril of being arraigned by action or indictment for every judgment he pronounces.” ”

“ Where it is among other things laid down that mere weakness of mind only is not a sufficient reason for granting the custody of the person and of his estate. The cupidity of relations is too apt to magnify indiscretion, eccentricity, and more particularly pecuniary extravagance into signs of madness; juries and commissioners cannot be too much on their guard against such modes of proof, lest one half of the world should lock up the other. The Romans committed prodigals to the custody of a guardian, as if they had been infants or madmen ”

“ Can the President and Censors of the College of Physicians execute their power of fine and imprisonment; can they restrain unlicensed intruders, or punish the bad practices of ignorant pretenders, without some study of the law? can they vindicate their rights without reference to the numerous acts of parliament on which they are founded? can they prove the guardians of the public health, without knowing the enactments by which it is protected? can they advise the legislative or executive power on numerous points submitted to their consideration, (as vaccine inoculation, quarantine, &c.) ”

“ Before we proceed to consider the several questions which may arise for the consideration of the medical witness, in the discharge of his forensic duties, we shall offer a few observations upon a point which has frequently given rise to discussion—Whether the existence of insanity cannot be equally, or in some cases, more satisfactorily established, or disproved, by witnesses who are not of the medical profession? by persons, for instance, who have had opportunities of observing the individual, where the same advantages have not been in the power of the practitioner. ”

“ In the active exercise of his duties as a medical jurist, how exalted and honourable is the occupation of the physician!—there is scarcely a circle of natural science, upon the boundaries of which he does not impinge in some point or other, of his extensive orbit. ”

“ This difference in the time of life at which puberty takes place, has been ingeniously assigned by David Hume as the reason why women in hot climates are almost universally treated as slaves; and why, on the contrary, their influence is so powerful and extensive in colder regions; for in the former, woman may be said to be in the zenith of her beauty while she is yet a child in understanding, and long before her intellect is matured she ceases to be an object of love ”

“ If a patient complains of a long protracted disease, which has rendered his life uncomfortable, and we at the same time perceive that his body has not undergone emaciation, we are naturally led to suspect the truth of his statement; and we shall find little difficulty in verifying, or dispelling our suspicions; nor ought we to forget, in an inquiry of this nature, to learn whether the patient has in truth ever flown to any remedy for relief ”

“ For the complete knowledge of medicine, as a science, all the collateral lights of natural philosophy and erudition, are required; while for its successful practice as an art, the physician should possess those high qualifications of mind, and have received that moral cultivation which a mere technical education can never bestow. ”

“ England, which in the beginning of the sixteenth century had been behind all the then civilized world in medical knowledge, finds herself in the commencement of the nineteenth inferior to none in any branch, superior to most in some, and taking a decided lead in all the ramifications into which the science of physic and the sister arts have divided themselves. ”

“ It is hardly necessary for us to make any observation upon a prejudice so absurd and unfounded; Evelyn also seems, in our opinion, to attribute more evils to the smoke than can be well substantiated; “I report myself,” says he, “to all those who have been compelled to breathe the air of other countries for some years, if they do not now perceive a manifest alteration in their appetite, and clearness of their spirits, especially such as have lived long in France and the city of Paris.” ”

“ What are the causes of Abortion? A gratuitous assumption on the part of some writers respecting the viability of the fœtus, has led them to adopt a division into abortion and premature labour, according as the exclusion from the uterus takes place before, or after, the sixth month of conception; and the distinction is now generally adopted. Natural abortion may be considered as arising either from accidental or constitutional causes; we shall hereafter consider the different modes by which the premature ejectment of a fœtus may be occasioned by art. ”

“ If the reader be a medical practitioner, we refer him for an illustration to the feelings which he experienced during his examination before the medical colleges; and if he be a barrister, he may remember with what a parched lip he gave utterance to his first address to the jury. Is it then unreasonable to believe that a person under the influence of conscious guilt, will be unable, from the dryness of his mouth, to surrender the rice in that soft state, which an innocent individual, with an undiminished supply of saliva, will so easily accomplish? ”

“ How far and in what cases opinion is evidence, is next to be considered; in ordinary matters where, from a statement of facts, the jury, in the exercise of sound and ordinary understanding, are capable of arriving at a just conclusion, the opinion of a witness is neither requisite or admissible; but in matters of science it is otherwise, provided that he backs his opinion by such reason as may be satisfactory to the understanding of his hearers; and this is the principal qualification of a medical witness, that he make himself intelligible to ordinary comprehensions. ”

“ It is impossible to question the justice and policy of this maxim as a general principle of legislation; “Salus Populi Suprema Lex,”—but there are circumstances which ought to exempt certain establishments from the operation of the common law of nuisances; we allude to those grand national works for smelting ores, which could not be closed without fatally affecting our national prosperity, and compromising the fate of the Arts themselves. ”

“ Nor is it uncommon that a woman, who has actually consented to her own dishonor, should, on fear of discovery, or on disappointment, or from jealousy, prefer an accusation of rape against her seducer; here the main fact being true, the coition having taken place, and under the usual circumstances of secresy, the life of a prisoner depends on the mere question of consent or violence ”

“ In Paris the number does not exceed 70,000, and yet with all the cumbrous enactments which that government has passed for their regulation, how far inferior they are in cleanliness, and how far greater are the effects of their effluvia, when compared with similar establishments in our city. The truth is, that the most elaborate system of medical police will never be so effective as the spirit of cleanliness which is so characteristic of this great and free people ”

“ Justice Bayley.—“I hope it is sufficiently notorious, that the causing persons to pass through the streets, who may have that disorder upon them, although they are going for medical advice to some person in whom they may have confidence, is an indictable offence; and if that person, instead of attending them at their own houses, as he might do, chooses to direct that they shall, from time to time, be brought, or come to him, there is no question that he is liable to an indictment.” ”

“ Youth passes into manhood by such insensible shades of gradation, that it has been considered as only a continuation of the same stage of perennity; and yet we shall find that the change from one to the other is sufficiently striking to entitle them to distinct places in the scale. Hippocrates and Galen have compared youth to the summer, and manhood to the autumn, thus insinuating that if one be less fervent, it is yet more mature than the other ”

“ SUPPOSITITIOUS CHILDREN. But there is yet another question which may, and in truth frequently does occur; where either a pretended pregnancy is followed by the grosser fraud of imposing a strange child upon the husband, either for the purpose of fixing his affection, or securing his estate; or where a living and healthy child is substituted for one either dead, or too sickly to give reasonable hope of prolonged existence. To this crime our laws assign no specific punishment; the parties can only be indicted for a conspiracy as they might have been for any ordinary misdemeanor ”

“ It is well known that women can only bear children until a certain age, after which the uterus is no longer capable of performing the action of gestation, or of performing it properly; now it is observable, that this incapability or imperfection takes place sooner in those who are advanced in life before they marry, than in those who have married and begun to bear children earlier; thus we find, that a woman who marries at forty shall be very apt to miscarry ”

“ In cases of impotence, sterility, idiotcy, and lunacy, the confidential medical attendant is the first person consulted on the subject; how often may he refute a groundless accusation, remove a causeless fear, and prevent a public exposure, by forming and demonstrating correct views of the subject? how often too may he aid the oppressed, defeat the guilty, and protect the innocent, by a knowledge of the legal remedies against fraud or coercion? ”

“ In many criminal cases too the surgeon is of necessity among the first witnesses of the deed; is it not important that he should know what evidence will be required to prove its perpetration? surrounded by ignorant or prejudiced persons, his calm and accurate view, not only of medical, but of general points, becomes of peculiar importance; yet if he be unacquainted with the forms of judicial enquiry, unversed in the history of criminal courts, he will be as little able to direct his attention to the proper objects, or to divest his mind of undue bias, as the most ignorant of the by-standers. ”

“ In this case the subject of patents would have formed a prominent feature in the second division of our work; for so rapid is the progress of chemical science, and so precarious the language by which its growing objects and phenomena are expressed, that, in the present state of the law, it becomes an extremely delicate task to draw the specification of a chemical patent in such terms as to escape the snares which ingenuity is ever ready to invent for its destruction. ”

“ The classification of the various topics of forensic medicine has ever been a fertile source of controversy; and we will venture to assert that, from the diversity, as well as versatility of the numerous subjects involved in the study of medical jurisprudence, no arrangement can ever be constructed which shall vie, in perspicuity and precision, with that of most branches of natural science, the objects of which, however numerous, maintain a mutual relationship, and admit of being displayed in a striking and natural order of connection. ”

“ A painter or a sculptor would be more competent to decide a question of this nature than a physician or surgeon, but in their absence there is none on whose testimony we can more safely rely than on the medical witness, whose habits of observing the formation, changes, and peculiarities of the human body, naturally prepare him for such examination. ”

“ That which may be deemed by the medical evidence clear and unequivocal, may not hit the sense of the gentlemen of the long robe, nor carry conviction to the jury.”
There is a natural propensity in human nature, from which the most honorable minds are not free, to view all questions through the medium of some preconceived opinion; in law and politics it is every day evident, in physic and in science it is too often apparent. ”

“ That premature labour may be induced by a mechanical operation, is too well known to the practitioner in midwifery to require any explanation in this place, while, in a work calculated for circulation beyond the confines of the profession, it would be obviously imprudent to enter into any minute details. It becomes our duty, however, to state, that in those cases of distorted pelvis, through which a full grown fœtus cannot pass without mutilation, the operation may be performed with perfect safety, and with equal advantage both to the child and to the mother. ”

“ At about the Fourth month after conception, that stage of utero-gestation arrives, which enables us, by means of an external examination, to place the fact beyond the reach of conjecture; for at this stage the uterus may be distinctly felt through the integuments of the abdomen; nor are we able before this period to determine the question by any examination per vaginam, for the fundus uteri is the portion first distended in consequence of conception; while the cervix, the only part that we can feel, does not begin to shorten to any appreciable extent, before the period just stated. ”

“ Let us, for the sake of illustration, suppose the following case:—A woman loses her husband suddenly, tenant in tail male, a month after marriage, and at a little more than eight months after his decease she is delivered of a perfect female child, and at nine months, she declares that she is delivered of another infant, which is a male. The heir at law, who has entered, contests the fact of this latter birth; the question therefore to be determined is, whether such an event is compatible with the known laws of utero-gestation. ”

“ The crime of violating a child, under the age of consent, is the more scrupulously to be investigated, as one mode of proof is too frequently excluded; the testimony of the sufferer, if she be of very tender age, is not evidence; the greater therefore the atrocity of the offence, the greater is the difficulty of conviction ”

“ If the law does not acknowledge this stage of life, it at least tacitly allows it, as being the one best adapted for the vigorous discharge of public duties; it is the age at which the greatest enterprizes have been achieved, and the most brilliant efforts of human genius fulfilled; the developement of the body having been accomplished, its powers are expanded in the production and support of intellectual energies. ”

“ The Physician should not come into Court merely to give his opinion—he should be able to explain it, and able to afford the reasons which influenced his decision—without such elucidation opinion becomes a bare dictum. ”