MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE lxxxv
After all, however, the fault is, as I say, not with the medical profession. The fault lies with the law. It is there that the nucleus, the kernel, of the trouble is to be found. Think for a moment of the method whereby "experts" are employed. The lawyer for one side searches till he finds a doctor who holds the opinion that is wanted. The lawyer for the other side searches till he finds a doctor who holds the precisely opposite opinion. Now these two lawyers bring these two doctors into court, and introduce them as entertaining views which truly represent the concensus of thought of the medical profession of the day. The whole proceeding is farcical. The opinions are diametrically opposed; besides, the whole world knows exactly how the "experts" were employed. Nobody believes a thing that is said: nobody is fooled. Some fees are paid, a very great deal of time is taken up, and that is the whole of the matter. Sometimes the reputation of the doctors is severely injured. Now, let us see how all this very abominable method affects the "progress" of legal medicine in America: 1. Doctors do not want to be experts. That is the first effect of the outrageous system. 2. When doctors do not desire to be experts, there is not much demand for expert literature (i. e., the literature of medical jurisprudence) and there is but little (comparatively) of that literature produced. 3. When there is not much produced, and doctors do not want to be experts anyway, there is not much teaching of medical jurisprudence in law schools and medical colleges. 4. All these facts tend to depress the mind of the man who is qualified to make discoveries in the medico- jurisprudential field, and cause him to turn his attention and energies accordingly to regions where the work is more congenial, very much better paid, and much more highly thought of.
In Germany and France the system of employing experts is very different. From rather early times, in those lands, the legal authorities, recognizing legal medicine as something essentially different from systematic medicine because of its different aims and purposes, created and fostered almost a separate profession in the science of medical juris- prudence. The consequence is that those two countries, in everything pertaining to this highly important science stand out easily as leaders of the world.
Thomas Hall Shastid.
