1/11/19 Medjur Discussion

Legal Medicine
- application of your knowledge in medicine to law and vice versa
- purpose is to administer good justice
- need to have knowledge of the facts

Legal bases
Section 5 of Rule 138 (attys and admission to BAR) – mandated

History
* China – longest running civilization
- 3000 BC
- published info on poisons; used bamboos to pass knowledge
- account of poisoning by wife of husband

Babylon
- Code of Hammurabi
- civil and criminal liability in medical malpractice
- medicine as practice has already been systematized
- fixing of medical fees
- classic topics (paternity) – rape, incest

Egypt
- 1700 BC
- priest determined cause of death whether natural or not
- classified stab wounds
- thorough knowledge of poisons

* Roman Empire
- 600 BC
- law on caesarean operation
- investigators of murder were selected from the citizenry

Greece
- 460 BC
- Hippocrates and others
- relative fatality of wounds in diff parts of the body
- average duration of pregnancy
- viability of children born before full term

* Roman Empire
- 529-534 AD Justinian Code
- use of medical experts
- assist the judiciary

* China
- 1236 AD Song Ci
- can claim that they have the earliest most systematic codification
- wrote Washing Away of Wrongs – Collected Cases of Injustice Rectified
- procedure for investigating suspicious deaths
- systematic examination of every corpse
- difficulties caused by decomposition: time itself is evidence
- cause of wounds
- strangulation vs drowning: drowning a victim can mask murder; autopsy  check lungs
-ante- vs postmortem burning  carbon residues in the lungs
- forensic entomology (study of insects)

1255 AD Zhao Yizhai

1308 AD Wang Yu – wrote A Record of No Wrongs
* 3 Treatises on Inquest Procedure

Germany
- 1553 AD Caroline Code
- murder, poisoning, other circumstance involving injury

Italy
- 1602 Fotunato Federate
- published a volume on forensic medicine
- age, legitimacy, pregnancy
- death during delivery
- dementia, poisoning

1621-51 Paolo Zacchia

- published Questiones Medicina

Germany
- 1650, Prof Micialeis delivered lectures on legal medicine

England
- 1788, first book on legal medicine written in English

France
- Since 1803 judges appointed medical experts  how they professionalized legal medicine in the West

America
- first society

PH
- 1960 UP offered the first course

SCOPE
1. Anatomy
2. Biometircs
3. DNA
4. reproduction and ART
5. Pregnancy and abortion
6. Paternity and filiation
7. Child abuse
8. Rape
9. Physical injuries
10. Insanity & Psychological incapacity
11. Sexuality
12. Drugs, Poisons and toxic substances  addiction signs
13. Medical negligence
14. Medical ethics
15. Death