Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/502

 The Medical Expert as a Witness. must be made for the bias necessarily be longing to men retained to advocate a cause, who speak not as to fact, but as to opinion; and who are selected on all moot questions, either from the prior advocacy of, or from their readiness to adopt, the opinion to be proved." (Whart. Crim. Ev. sect. 420.) At no period since the revival of learning has the medical fraternity been in such a seething ferment over every phase of the curative art as at the present time. The dif ferent schools will agree upon nothing, and all the way from the most recent discoveries of pharmaceutical chemistry to Laennec's theory of " Auscultation," there is a wide welter of " barbaric yawp " shoreless as Malebolge. Even practitioners of the same school cannot agree upon the same manner of treatment, nor upon the application of the same remedial drugs. What hope then for our "expert"? His testimony is en tirely neutralized by the " opposing ex pert" and the jury, that helpless receptacle of all known drivel, are reduced to a state of mental putrefaction in their abor tive attempts to harmonize the discordant views. Let us consider briefly the usual environ ment of the average physician before he be comes deified as an expert. From the time he leaves college, his life is spent among those who are hopelessly ignorant of materia medica or of clinical procedure. Impercep tibly there fastens upon him, by insidious and subterraneous approaches, an exalted opinion of his own accomplishments, and a corresponding contempt for antagonistic views. He is a monomaniac on the subject of his own importance. The lawyer is eman cipated in great measure from the effects of such an existence, as his postulates are con stantly the subject of criticism and demur, his position and theories are controverted and denied, and by constant contact and attrition with other superior minds, he is admonished to place salutary limitations upon his own conceits, while he absorbs a

465

wholesome respect for the opinion of his legal fraters. Not so with the physician. At rare inter vals, usually at the instigation of an admirer, he is called into consultation on a critical case. There is no occasion in such an event for controversy. His presence would not be requested if there were the least danger of such a calamity. Professional etiquette re quires him to sustain his colleague or copractitioner, and they meet in that spirit of camaraderie which makes disagreement im possible; both agree that it is infinitely better that the patient should " demit," under the prescribed regulations in such case made and provided, rather than that he should survive through innovation on that sacramental thing known as the " regular practice." The consequence of this training per sisted in for a series of years without the least deviation, enables the serene olympian to mount the witness stand with the perfect composure and touch-me-not-ish-ness that belongs to the elect Brahminical caste. He answers the interrogatories with a chilling and glacial hauteur that shows the impervious nature of his conceit and the braying folly of any attempt to remove it. Long years of hectoring over hypochon driacs, valetudinarians and hospital nurses has imparted an aspect of infallibility to his ipse dixit, that nothing but the most drop sical temerity would dispute. He is looked upon as the Gog and Magog of Hunnish desolation to any theorizing that contra dicts that sacramental thing known as his "opinion." His narrative, delivered with all the technique of his cult, flows out in vague profusion that usually indicates the censorial character of a pedagogic mind. The language which he regards as classically elegant is merely pedantically dull; still you may gather from his " reverie " that the Esculapian pollen as garnered by the ortho dox school which he represents is a wonder fully remedial product, but the nauseating