MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE lxxxiii
these lectures were we have no means of knowing. We do, however, understand that, at the Albany Medical College, beginning with Amos Dean, a record was established for excellence of teaching in medical jurisprudence never broken to this day. Dean, Beck, Porter, Mosher, Tucker, Balch, and McFarlane, have been the able and eloquent instruc- tors to whom is owing this honor of the Albany school. By the middle of the century, the teaching of medical jurisprudence was very general and, possibly, very good. As to the extent to which the subject was taught, Dean, in his preface, remarks: "No medical institution in this country or Europe could now deem its organization complete without a department devoted exclusively to an exposition of the facts and principles embraced in medical jurisprudence." Contrast this state of affairs with that of the present day!
In the matter of lego-medical discoveries Americans have not done much. Gross's experiments on strangling, performed in 1833 (or pub- lished in that year), were productive of important results. Prof. John C. Dalton brought out a number of good points as to the differen- tiation between the corpus luteum verum and the corpus luteum spurium. Finally, in 1869, Dr. Joseph Richardson discovered the extremely signifi- cant fact that human erythrocytes can be distinguished with certainty from the corresponding cells of nearly all the lower animals. "These three, and no more." A sort of trefoil clover-sprig, which has brought no very good luck in the matter of further discoveries.
Societies for the study of legal medicine have been established in various cities and states. The most widely known, perhaps, is the New York Medico-legal Society. Under the auspices of this vital and persist- ant association it is that the "Medico-legal Journal" is published. There exists in New York City another organization devoted to the same purpose, which is known as the New York Society of Medical Jurispru- dence. There is also a Philadelphia Society of Medical Jurisprudence. And in Massachusetts exists the Massachusetts Society of Medical Jurisprudence. This last-named organization has published a number of interesting transactions.
What, on the whole, has been the progress which American physicians have made in lego-medical science? Certainly not much. American medico-jurisprudentists have written a few notable volumes; they have translated fewer; they have established not one-tenth enough societies devoted to the subject in question; they have founded two journals, but one of which is current; they have delivered a good many courses of lectures (by far too much condensed, and unaccompanied by clinical material) in the very few hours allotted and begrudged them by the authorities of the schools. Finally, they have made some two or three im- portant and permanent discoveries. Beyond these few things — nothing.
