Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/91

 MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE Lxxxi

The writer seems actually to fear lest he may produce some pictorial or concrete effect.

Reese, in 1874, put forth a little volume so useful that a person does not like to point out its rather obvious defects. Some years ago, by actual count, I found that Reese's "Medical Jurisprudence" was the "pre- ferred" text-book in forty-five out of fifty medical schools.

Finally, we come to Irving C. Rosse, whose merits as a writer on lego-medical topics I do not think are by any means appreciated. It is chiefly, though not at all only, as a stylist that Dr. Rosse excelled, but let no stickler for " substance and not form " raise up his shrill protesting voice on that account.

In spite of manifest defects, the writings of Rosse are clear, convincing and impressive. They are even more; they are rich, sumptuous, and filled to the running-over point with genuine enthusiasm.

Rosse we know as a medico-jurisprudentist chiefly by his chapters in Witthaus and Becker's " Medical Jurisprudence, Forensic Medicine, and Toxicology." For this encyclopedic undertaking he wrote the articles on "Personal Identity," " Death by Drowning," and "Unnatural Crimes." Turn to any one of these and in a moment you are fairly whirled away by the rapidity of Rosse's movement, and by his own deep and genuine interest. No one, indeed, can read Rosse and not in a very short time begin to understand that this man is really in love with his subject, as well as learned. His are no mere dry duties per- formed; his no perfunctory and soul-wearying task. So abundant an understanding of his subject does he possess that he pours his treasures out before you like some great Eastern nabob, with proud but careless profusion. Zoology, geology, astronomy; history, philosophy, Hebrew antiquities; the old red sandstone, fishes, the African races, how a man handles a cane in walking, the prevalence of beastiality in China — all these and a thousand other matters that the reader feels all the while he would never himself have thought of are all poured together in Rosse's medico-jurisprudential treasure-heap till the reader is astounded, overwhelmed, agasp with wonder and pleasure.

Moreover, Rosse never treats a subject, or a single department of a subject, generally and abstractly, but always concretely and specific- ally. This tendency is seen in the very simplest matters and sentences. For example, instead of remarking, abstractly, that human bone-tissue cannot certainly be distinguished from the corresponding tissue of animals, he observes, concretely, " we cannot say with safety whether the fragment belonged to a mouse, a man, or an elephant." Who can imagine an abstract writer — Dean or Ordronaux — producing such a sentence? Again, instead of contenting himself with the general statement that the bodies of persons who have drowned often drift long distances from the