Civil Malpractice in the Middle Ages. arm, for the payment of his fee. The arm had either been set badly or too early, and having been inconsiderately moved by the patient, gangrene appeared. The patient re fused to pay the bill. The court then ordered some expert surgeons to examine the ques tion as to how the accused had acted, and if the operation and his dressings were in conformity to the rules of his art. After hav ing heard the declarations made by both the surgeon and the patient, they returned a ver dict in favor of the surgeon, and as a final consequence the court ordered the patient to pay the surgeon's fees. This same writer mentions another case where the surgeon was sued in the criminal court and was con demned to pay fifteen thousand pounds dam age and interest, because the ignorance of the surgeon was proven by the findings of the experts called in on the case. Charondas, a well-known lawyer who flourished in the middle of the sixteenth cen tury, said that a surgeon was liable for acci dents which might occur to his patients if they came from his mistake. He mentions a case of a surgeon who was taking care of a patient afflicted with a venereal ulcer, but an accident occurred during the treatment which caused the death of the patient. For this mishap, the surgeon was brought to jus tice as having been the cause of the death. Charondas during the trial held that since neither deceit nor ignorance on the part of the surgeon could be shown in the treatment employed for the cure of the ulcer that the surgeon could not be held responsible for the accident which occurred later. Papon, a well-known judge who lived dur ing the regency of Catharine de Medicis. says that although a patient may die, the physician should not be held liable unless he was found ignorant or too hardy in his treat ment and that consequently a legal examina tion should be held in order to ascertain the true circumstances of the case, and if the
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physician is found to have committed a mis take he should be punished by the courts. This same author then relates the case of a physician who gave to a patient a potion which was either capable of killing him or saving him in a very short time, and the patient died from its effects. The physician was, however, easily acquitted, but he was admonished by the court never to repeat the same treatment again under penalty of being severely punished. Jean Duret, a physician of some note, who lived during the last half of the sixteenth century, declared that a physician was liable if he showed himself an idiot in both the theory and practice, or if he showed himself too audacious, and Raymond de 1'Eglise up held that a physician was liable not only for his temerity and his neglect of a patient, but also for his ignorance as well. Brillon, whose classical dictionary was published in 1711, also upheld that physicians were liable for their acts. He based his opinion on Papon and another writer, who declared that a phy sician was liable either for a slight mistake or for a very slight mistake, and he relates several judgments in which the principle of medical liability is upheld. The public was far better protected against nostrums and quacks a few hundreds years ago than it is at the present time, as will be seen from the following. In the reign of Edward VI., Grigg, a poulterer in Surrey, was put in the pillory at Croydon and again in Southwark, for cheating people out of their money by pretending to cure them by charms, or by looking at them, or by casting their water. Many other quacks have, at various times, been subjected to punishment. Anthony was punished for his Aurum Potabilc: Arthur Dee for advertising medicines to cure, all diseases; Foster for selling a powder for the cure of chlorosis; Tenant, a urine caster, who sold pills at six pounds apiece; Aires, for selling purging sugar plums;
