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 The Green Bag

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tency, or the loss of some part.

He

law, and in reality it belongs more to

points out that he should be particularly

the confessional than to the courts of justice. Conjugal duty, miracles, fast

careful and alert in his prognosis be cause the ultimate outcome of certain wounds and injuries is very uncertain. He also says that the foremost and

principal quality for the surgeon is that he shall have a pure soul, fearing God

and never reporting a small wound as a large one nor vice versa, because the jurisconsults will be guided in their deci sion by the report.

From this time on works on forensic medicine were published in large num ber. In 1597, Baptista Condronchi, a physician of lmola, published a work

ings and other religious rites, stigmates of sorcerers, monachal claustration, in the medical aspect, ﬁnd considerable space. However, all these things would

naturally be treated by a physician of Innocent IV, at the time when the canon law held a prominent place.

In France we have the treatises of Gendry, of Angers, of de Blégny, of Lyons, in 1684, and particularly L'Art

des Rapporis, published by Devaux in 1708. The latter remained the vade mecum of the sworn surgeon for an

entitled Methodus testiﬁcandi, in qm'bus dam casibus media's ablan's. Here he studies the principal legal questions brought up in cases of disease and

entire century. In 1598, Séverin Pineau, a student of Ambroise Paré, published a book entitled De virginatis notis, which

wounds, sudden death, poisoning, pu The work ends with a few samples of re ports bearing on facts which occurred in

relative to the existence of the hymen, a very much discussed question of the time. In 1611, Vincent Tagareau at tacked the peculiar custom of the Con

his practice and which are modestly

gress in his Discours sur l’lmpuissame.

berty, virginity, pregnancy and labor.

contained the results of his researches

signed: “I, Condronchi, the most humble

And lastly, forensic medicine became

of physicians and philosophers of Imola." In 1602 Fortunatus Fidelis, a physician

enriched at the end of the eighteenth century by a capital discovery, because

of Saint-Philip of Agirone, published a I in 1663 Bartholini studied hydrostatic book entitled De relationibus medicorum pulmonary docimasia, which had already in quibusdam ea omm'a qme in forensibus been foreseen by Galen, and John ac publicis causis medici referre solent Schreyer, a physician of Silesia, applied the method for the ﬁrst time in juridical plenissime traduntur. The most important and complete matter in a case of infanticide. work of the epoch is without doubt the Without entering into detail I would Qutestiones medico-legales, published in a like to indicate the character of these fragmentary way from 1621 to 1658 by the

Italian

physician,

Paul

Zacchias,

early works on legal medicine. If one simply goes over the index of the

physician of the States of the Church.

treatises by Fidelis and Zacchias, one

The author received great and enthusi astic praise from both physicians and theologians of his time and the author

will at once perceive the ensemble of the

ity of this work was maintained for

application of medicine to canon law, civil law, and criminal law. The follow ing are the subjects which are more par ticularly studied from the medico-legal standpoint: the classiﬁcation of ages.

nearly

two

centuries.

In

this

book,

which bristles with erudition, is to be

found a quantity of medical questions studied from the viewpoint of the canon

problems which presented themselves to these early medico-legal specialists in the