The Medical Expert and the Legal Examiner. fcssional men who form, and under oath de clare, diverse and conflicting opinions upon matters pertaining to their professions. How often do lawyers and statesmen of the most eminent ability, the profoundest learning, and of unquestioned integrity, while acting as judges of the highest courts and tribu nals, under the same official responsibility and oath of off1ce, from the same undisputed facts and authorities, arrive at and declare diverse and antagonistic opinions! From the unnumbered cases that could be cited for illustration and proof, reference will only be made to the four to five decision of the United States Supreme Court upon the in come tax clause of the Wilson bill, in 1895, and to the seven to eight decision of the Electoral Commission upon the Tilden-Hayes presidential controversy in 1877. The clergy, so far as technical theology is concerned, seem to be able to agree upon only one proposition, which is, in the language of Bishop Warburton, "Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy." The late Mr. Justice Miller, while consider ing the affidavits of a large number of emi nent civil engineers upon a question of engineering, says: "The affidavits on both sides are numerous. They demonstrate what all courts and juries have so often felt, that where the question is one of opinion and not of fact, though that opinion should be founded upon scientific principles or professional skill, the inquiry is painfully unsatisfactory, and the answers strangely contradictory." The medical profession, in forming and declaring different and conflicting opinions from the same facts and scientific premises, does not differ from the other learned pro fessions; certainly it will not suffer by a comparison with them. If the doctor and the lawyer understood each other better, and each remembered the relations existing between them and the part each performs in the preparation and trial of medico-legal cases, there would be less criti
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cism expressed by the representative mem bers of the two professions. The expert witness testifies to establish the truth. He is examined to elicit the truth, and is crossexamined to draw out the whole truth as to the matters at issue, and as to himself so far as it affects his credibility or the weight of his testimony. Not every man who is authorized to affix " Attorney-at-Law " to his name is in fact a lawyer; nor is every one who has a legal right to write " M.D." after his name a medical expert, qualified to testify upon all questions of chemistry, toxicology, histology, and the more unusual matters of medical science. The field is too broad, and the problems are too numerous and too dif ficult to be mastered and retained by any one man. A specialist may confine his studies to a small nook of this field, and compass the learning pertaining thereto, pro viding the nook is small enough. As a rule, the general practitioner, without special re search and preparation, is unprepared for a rigid cross-examination upon the unusual and complicated questions of medical science by a thoroughly qualified cross-examiner, and for that reason, without careful preparation he should not assume to be an expert upon these matters. It is true, however, that the doctor can often rely upon the ignorance and lack of preparation of the lawyer, and stand the ordeal. But no lawyer who does his duty to himself, to his profession, to his client and to the cause of justice, will attempt to cross-examine a medical expert, or try a case turning upon a question of medical science, until he has carefully studied and thoroughly understands the medical prin ciples and authorities bearing upon that question. He should become a specialist upon the matters involved. Said an eminent professor of anatomy and physiology : " The most lucid lecture I ever heard upon an anatomical subject was delivered upon the ankle joint by a lawyer before a jury, in de fending a surgeon for alleged malpractice in treating a crushed ankle." The lawyer must
