Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/457

damages por tant que ce il avct rien pris de celui • Efforts were made in France by Charles рог le megcr si est tenus don rendre par VI., Henry IV., Charles VII. and Louis dreit. . . . Et se celui micge avet anci male. XIV. to formulate laws to control the prac mcnt mege corne est dit dessus aucun franc home tice of surgery, but these were apparently ou aucune franche femme et elle en inoret la rai only partially successful. It is not without some interest, perhaps, to add that, so far as son juge que celuy meige det esire pendus I have been able to discover, Henry IV. of et . . . it a dct cstrc don seignor par drcit." France was the first to create what would at The text adds that before being put to the present time be called a medico-legal death the physician should be taken through expert. These experts were selected from the streets of the city in order to serve as among the most capable surgeons. It is also an example to his colleagues. positive that about the middlle of the six It happened, that on account of fear re teenth century certain cities appointed what garding their liability, physicians refused might be termed expert surgeons, for the their services to patients, or, if they gave purpose of examining the wounds of patients them, they demanded a guarantee releasing seriously injured and to see that the attend them from any responsibility should the case ing surgeon treated the case properly; for terminate unfavorably. Guillaume de Туг otherwise the patient could bring suit for tells us that Amaury I., feeling that his tort should it be shown that there had been strength was leaving him, demanded medi malpractice. That this is a fact will be found cines from some Syrian physicians. These from the following quotation that I make they refused, and he was only able to obtain from the Treatise on Surgery by Felix them from the Latin physicians after he had Wurtz. a noted surgeon of Basel, whose given his pfomise that they need not be dis fame was widespread at about 1560: turbed, no matter what issue the disease Un Chirurgien ne doit point permettre a un might take. cliaqun de voir, ou mettre la main ait.r blessures In the ancient French laws, the liability of de ses patiens, ce que meantmoins plusieurs ont physicians and surgeons was distinctly held. accoustumé de faire. Ce n'est pas que je z'cutllc Denizart established a hierarchic difference blasmcr la coutume de phisieurs Villes bien between physicians and surgeons and de policées, ou les Magistrats font ordinairement clarc-d that the latter were subordinate to l'isitcr une fois, ou deux, toutes les blessures physicians. He admitted the liability of sur considérables, par les Chirurgiens jure?.: ou geons and declared them held for tort toward contraire, je soustient qu'elle est c.rtremcnt néces those they might maim by their ignorance, saire et qu'elle se devrait establir par tout, СПАЯ and attributes to physicians the power of ex que si quelque un est mal pense ainsi qu'il arrive amining the facts of the case in order to assez souvent, il en puisse faire ses plaintes à la ascertain whether the surgeon was repre Justice." hensible or not. He goes on to say that: "When a surgeon has conducted the case ac The mistakes committed in the rules of cording to the rules of his art, he should be practice should be appreciated by men en paid for his operations and for his care and gaged in that profession, and Denizart quotes dressings, although the patient may not have a judgment which acquitted a surgeon who been cured, even if one was obliged at a later was accused of having given bad treatment, date to do an amputation of some fractured only after having heard the testimony of ex limb, the cure of which the surgeon had pert surgeons. The case was as follows: A undertaken." surgeon sued a patient, who had a broken