Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/87

 MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE Ixxvii

This brief lecture constitutes, as I have said, the beginning of medi- cal jurisprudence in the United States. Now I want to describe such progress as we are able to discern in the medico-jurisprudential literature of America, also the advance which has been made in this country in the teaching of legal medicine (real or reputed), and, furthermore, such American discoveries in medicine as possess an especial legal value, with finally, the improvement, if any, in the matter of medico-jurisprudential societies.

Following close upon the lectures of Rush (in 1S14), Dr. James S. Stringham, professor of medical jurisprudence in the College of Physi- cians and Surgeons in the City of New York, published in " The American Medical and Philosophical Register" a syllabus of lectures which had been delivered by him in the institution mentioned. This is only a syllabus, it is very brief indeed, and, finally, possesses merely a modicum of interest save what is exclusively and purely historical.

The next important writing on medical jurisprudence did not appear till 1817 — a graduation thesis by Dr. John Brodhead Beck, entitled " An Inaugural Dissertation on Infanticide, Submitted to the Examination

of Samuel Bard of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the

University of the State of New York; and Publicly Defended for the

Degree of Doctor of Medicine " In my collection of works on

legal medicine I have a copy of this book which I very highly prize, for it bears upon the title-page the handwritten inscription, "T. Romeyn Beck, M. D., from his affect. Bro., The Author." A recent writer remarks of Beck's little brochure, "It may be truly said that in this treatise the subject was so thoroughly presented that subsequent writers have done little more than reproduce it, more or less imperfect, and that it is still the standard work on infanticide in the English language." This is high praise, but probably not too high. The work was incorporated by its author's brother, the much more famous Theodric Romeyn Beck — he to whom the little volume above-mentioned was presented — into the most remarkable work on medical jurisprudence which has ever appeared in America — a work next to be considered.

This notable production — the book of the brother— appeared in 1823. It consisted of two rather large octavo volumes, entitled, simply, " Kle- ments of Medical Jurisprudence." Dr. Theodric Romeyn Beck was at first professor of medical jurisprudence in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the Western District of the State of New York, later of materia medica at a school which has always held in the esteem of both doctors and lawyers an extremely high place for the excellence of its teaching in medical jurisprudence — the Albany Medical College. The lectures of Dr. Beck had indeed already attracted much attention for the profoundly of their substance and the perfection of their form,