THE MEDICAL EXPERT AND THE LEGAL EXAMINER. By John C. Patterson of the M1ch1gan Bar. THE field of medical jurisprudence is owned and occupied as common pro perty by the lawyer and the doctor. Here the learning and skill of the two professions meet and mingle. While each has its sep arate functions to perform before the courts, one cannot perform its function without the cooperation of the other. Each should therefore not only understand its own work and duties, but also the work and duties of the other. New and complicated questions are constantly arising in forensic medicine, which tax the resources of both professions, and which demand harmonious efforts to ob tain the best results. The subject will be considered from the practitioner's standpoint under our present system of procedure. In stating the essential factors of a law suit in the form of a syllogism, the law is the major premise, the facts are the minor premise, and the verdict or judgment is the conclusion. In medico-legal cases, as in all other cases, the lawyer must lay down the law, or major premise; the medical expert must establish the facts of medical science involved, or the minor premise; and from these premises, the conclusion or judgment follows. The lawyer, under his oath of office speaks from the bar; the doctor, un der his oath as a witness, speaks from the witness stand. Without the major premise of law, and the minor premise of medical facts, the syllogism would be incomplete, and no conclusion or judgment could logi cally or legally follow. On the trial, the doctor has nothing to do with the lawyer in establishing the law of the case, or major premise, while the lawyer has much to do with the doctor in drawing out the medical facts or minor premise. In the words of Greenleaf, " The lawyer's pro
fession leads him to explore the mazes of falsehood, to detect its artifice, to pierce its thickest veil, to follow and expose its sophis tries, to compare the statements of its differ ent witnesses with severity, to discover truth and separate it from error." He must ex amine and cross-examine the medical witness, the same as other witnesses, and elicit the scientific facts known, and the professional opinions material to the issue, the means and opportunities of the expert for acquiring his scientific knowledge and skill, the extent and degree of the same, as well as his bias, candor and credibility, for the benefit of the court and jury, who must consider and pass upon these questions. The doctor has often cursed the lawyer for his manner and methods of examination and cross-examina tion; and the lawyer and judge have fre quently criticised the doctor for his state ments and opinions; but human nature is about the same in the doctor and the lawyer, modified, perhaps, by education, environ ment, and the discipline of business. When we consider what a large part of medical authority is based only upon theory and has not been reduced to an exact sci ence, it is not strange that medical experts differ so widely in their opinions. Often medical science itself should be criticised for its imperfections, rather than the expert witness for giving opinions based upon that science. The opinions of all expert witnesses, although the only means of proving certain facts, and absolutely necessary in the ad ministration of justice, are, from their in trinsic nature, very unsatisfactory. "An opinion," says an authority, "is a matte about which two persons can, without ab surdity, think differently." The doctors are not the only class of pro
