Inviolability of the Httman Body. stakes driven through them. Even the re cent peculiar legislation of New York, which made an unsuccessful attempt at suicide a penal offense, has become practically a dead-letter, owing to the difficulty of en forcing it. One striking exception which the law makes as to the inviolability of the human body is when it deems an unusual exposure and exhibition of it necessary to the attain ment of criminal or civil justice. The courts are by no means unanimous in their views on this point. In civil cases, a majority of the courts hold that where one sues for an injury to his body, either he is bound to submit to a surgical examination on the demand of the other party, or the court may in its discretion order him so to sub mit. The cases to this effect are cited in Railroad Co. т. Botsford, 143 U. S. 250. In that case, however, a vigorous decision to the contrary was announced, and this has been followed, or had previously been ad judged, in Missouri, Illinois, New York, Indiana. Michigan has recently attached herself to the majority (Graves т. Battle Creek, 19 L. R. A. 641.) In New York a law has recently been enacted giving the right which her courts had denied. The chief, and it seems to me the unanswerable argument against this power, is that the law has no authority to compel a private suitor to produce any particular class or measure of evidence, or any evidence whatever. If his evidence fails to satisfy the jury, he simply fails in his contention. The argu ment of delicacy, propriety and policy has force, but the other seems overpowering. There is a similar but less serious conflict on the question whether one on trial for crime may be compelled to expose parts of his person which are usually kept covered, or to do unusual acts, in order to identify him; as for example, to strip his arm to show a mark upon it, or to put his foot in a track. There is certainly no objection to the jury's viewing those parts of the body
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which are commonly visible, but to stretch the rule beyond this seems to infringe the constitutional privilege of the accused to refuse to give or furnish evidence tending to criminate himself. The cases and the argu ments on this point are arrayed in GREEN BAG, Vol. IV, 555. The most recent ruling is that in New York, that a prisoner may be compelled to stand up in court for the purpose of being identified, but this comes within the class of usual acts. In England a statute compels a prisoner accused of forgery to "show his hand," if required; i. f. to write in court. Having thus traced the legal inviolability of the human body from its conception to its dissolution and burial, there remains only to remark that the same principle subsists even after its burial. The public man, it is true, is subject in his last moments to a terror worse than death, namely, the liability to have his effigy stuck up in some public place, like those ridiculous statues, in frock coat and trousers, which disfigure the parks and squares of Boston and New York. This is one of those penalties which is imposed on greatness, or the commonplace qualities which are supposed. to be akin to greatness. But the law will take care that no private man's person shall be thus perpetuated or caricatured against his will or that of his family. Such was the humane decision of the court in Schuyler i>. Curtis, 64 Hun. 594, where the exposure of a public statue of a very excellent and very modest woman was prohibited on the petition of her de scendants, although the design was purely complimentary, and was to exhibit the statue at the late Columbian Exposition, at Chi cago, under the title, " The Typical Philan thropist." In this case the court obiter deny the right of strangers to erect statues even to public men against the will of their fami lies or descendants, observing that no one "thereby surrenders his personality while living, and his memory when dead, to the public to be used or abused, as any one of that irresponsible body may see fit. . . It
