MEDICAL EXPERT TESTIMONY. 609 



gence who have reached adult life are experts. It is, with all of us, 

 the daily practice of our lives to observe and study men's conduct and 

 motives, and we are quick to discover the smallest evidence of mental 

 unsoundness, especially in those with whom we have intimate pei*sonal 

 acquaintance. Indeed, in most cases the mental alienation is suspected, 

 or well known, long before the case is brought under the notice of the 

 alienist. 



It is not the same, however, in reference to most other subjects in 

 which the services of experts are demanded. It is not so in most mat- 

 ters pertaining to either science, art, commerce, or the general business 

 of life ; in all of which the average citizen is presumably without ex- 

 perience or knowledge, and without the aid of the expert he could not 

 intelligently perform the duties of a judge or of a juror. 



If the question involved were one of mineral or vegetable poi- 

 soning, the trial of the case without the assistance of a practical 

 chemist would deservedly expose the court and the law to public 

 contempt. 



If, again, it were a question whether the neck of the thigh-bone 

 had been broken within or without the capsule, involving, as this ques- 

 tion does, in a great measure, the degree of permanent injury which 

 the patient has sustained, without the aid of an experienced surgeon 

 it would be impossible to place the case fairly before a jury, not one 

 of whom, probably, had ever seen either accident, or knew that they 

 were not identical. 



Finally, there is reason to fear that in one direction professed alien- 

 ists are more liable to ei'r than most other men of learning and experi- 

 ence, but who have not confined their studies so exclusively to the spe- 

 cialty of mental diseases. 



It is a fact of common observation that, in all departments of 

 medical science, the specialists to whom our science is indebted for 

 some of its most important improvements and discoveries, are inclined 

 to extend the range or number of diseases and of sympathies referable 

 to the organs of whose lesions they have made a special study. This 

 they do conscientiously, sometimes wisely and sometimes unwisely — 

 their errors being exposed when some other specialist traces the func- 

 tional disturbance to a lesion of some other organ, or the general 

 practitioner demonstrates that all or nearly all the organs of the body 

 are suffering from a general dyscrasy, and that the lesion of no one in 

 particular can fairly be held responsible for the particular symptoms 

 in reference to the cause and treatment of which the specialist is con- 

 sulted. 



Alienists need to be reminded that they have shown the same tend- 

 ency to increase the number of diseases under the title of insanity, 

 and to widen the range of their specialty, by including a great many 

 eccentricities and moral obliquities under this title ; and that by so 

 doing they have virtually relieved the subjects of these peculiarities 



VOL. XXTI. — 39 



