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The Green Bag.

be a trained student and a discriminating property by this class of testimony. The ex worker, to enable him to enter the domain of pert witness who fabricates, falsifies, or dis another profession and master the elementary torts the truth, can claim no special privi principles of science and art upon which it is leges or exemptions. He suffers no more founded. Many lawyers are unable to qualify and no less than any other witness in like themselves to prepare and try medico-legal manner offending; and he has no special cases for the lack of proper training and grievance against the legal profession for mental discipline as the foundation for their exposing his ignorance, falsehood and em legal studies. Whenever an ignorant pre piricism. tender or conceited quack narrates his brazen The genuine medical expert has honesty, assumptions, his fraudulent theories and sincerity and love of truth and justice mixed dangerous falsehoods, to court and jury, with his learning and skill. He is diligent and rashly swears to matters and expresses in his examinations, and exhaustive in his opinions not authorized by the truths of research. He is careful and conservative medical science, the legal advocate is re on the witness stand. He tells what he quired not only to be qualified to expose knows and no more. He bases his opinions the perjurer and destroy the force of his upon scientific authority and experience; dangerous perjuries by a skillful and caustic and for such opinions, formulated by an in cross-examination, but the sacred trusts im tellectual process, and not by caprice or pas posed upon him by his client, by his pro sion, he is prepared to give a sound reason. fessional obligation, and by the cause of He is conscious that sacred rights depend justice, demand it, and nothing short of it. upon his professional facts and opinions, and The medical fraud who has thus been ex states them with clearness and candor. He posed will never forgive the lawyer, and will gives no scientific facts when none exist; revile the legal profession with the utmost no professional opinions when no basis bitterness. He will ignore the fact that he therefor is known. His intelligent answers alone was responsible for his own humiliation. and manly deportment in court proclaim the sentiment of Lord Mansfield : " Let jus "No man e'er felt the halter draw, With good opinion of the law." tice prevail though the heaven falls." Fiat But the learned doctor, the candid inves justitia ruat eaelum. tigator, and the honest medical expert, love Such a witness is prepared for a rigid to see the quack thus dissected, his false pre cross-examination, and seldom does he com tenses exposed, and his windy conceit taken plain of the cross-examiner. The compe out of him. A quaint philosopher has said : tent, truthful and self-possessed expert wit "Some folks know a great many things that ness can always stand the test of a searching ain't so." If an expert swears to medical cross-examination. Truth is like pure gold; matters that are " not so," or allows a narrow the more it is burnished the brighter it be prejudice or a partisan bias to commit a comes. fraud upon his mind, warp his interpreta The medical expert should discriminate tions, or mold his opinions to fit the theory between theory and knowledge, between of his side of the case or to sustain some that part of medical authority which is based preconceived notion, regardless of the truths upon theory, and that part which is reduced of medical science, whether done consciously to an exact science; but this requires a or unconsciously, he should be exposed and mental training and an accuracy in profes the dangerous effects of his false testimony sional scholarship, which many do not pos destroyed by the cross-examiner. Men are sess; and such doctors should hesitate to not infrequently robbed of life, liberty or assume the qualifications of an expert.