T. & T. CLARK, LAW BOOKSELLERS, GEORGE STREET. GLASGOW: THOMAS MURRAY AND SON; AND J. SMITH AND SON. ABERDEEN: WYLLIE AND SON. LONDON: STEVENS AND SONS. MDCCCLXXIX SOUL MUIR AND PATERSON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 92402 LIBRARY OF THE LELAND STANFORD, JR., UNIVERSITY THE JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE. FORENSIC MEDICINE FROM A SCOTTISH POINT OF VIEW. By DOUGLAS MACLAGAN, M.D., F.R.C.P.E., Being an Address in Forensic Medicine, delivered at the Meeting of the British My first duty is to thank you for having done me the honour of asking me to address you on the subject of Forensic Medicine. I should have been unwilling to accept this compliment if I had fancied that it was paid to me as an individual; but I recognise in it an expression of your goodwill to the University in which I have the honour to be a professor, and in the name of my Alma Mater I thank you cordially and sincerely. I only wish that she herself, and that department of our profession of which I have to speak to you, had not deprived me of a good deal of the time. which I required for the due discharge of this duty; but an unusual number of candidates for degrees necessitated the bestowal of much of my time on examinations, and a succession of important medico-legal investigations occupying the hours I could spare from other work, concurred in engrossing my attention for some weeks. I am constrained to put in this special defence in extenuation of my poverty of performance-not for my own protection, but lest the University of Edinburgh should suffer in character from the shortcomings of him who is her representative on the present occasion. I do not profess to have been troubled with much doubt as to the line which I should follow in addressing you. I have not thought of recounting to you the history of forensic medicine during the last year or two, because I am not aware of any startling discovery or revolution in opinion which marks an era in its progress. I never thought of occupying the time of busy practitioners of medicine with details as to processes of medico-legal investigation in which the great majority of you would never think of engaging. It never occurred, to me to occupy your attention with a narrative of actual cases in which I have been engaged, VOL. XXIII. NO. CCLXV.-JANUARY 1879. A |