[78 APPENDIX. 



and the parties were put to great expense. An arrangement 

 was made by which the witness bound himself to pay a part 

 of the expenses. The Chief Baron said : It must be dis- 

 tinctly understood that in all cases where it appeared to the 

 Court that there had been a wilful disobedience of a subpoena 

 after proper service, such a contempt of Court would be 

 visited with the punishment it deserved. Martin, B. : It 

 was not to be tolerated that a man should exercise any 

 discretion as to whether he would or would not attend a 

 Court in pursuance of subpoena. Enormous costs were in- 

 curred in preparing a case and bringing it down to trial, the 

 whole of which were to be thrown away and wasted, because 

 a man refused to obey a lawful summons to attend as a wit- 

 ness. Pigott, B. : A subpoena was not to be treated as mere 

 waste paper. Public justice required that persons wilfully 

 committing contempt of Court should be dealt with in such 

 a manner as to teach them that they could not commit a 

 contempt of Court with impunity. 



Lord Campbell's dictum in reference to the distinction 

 between fact and opinion confers no practical benefit on 

 witnesses. It is at all times difficult in science, and in the 

 medical sciences particularly, to separate them ; and if a 

 man appears to testify to a medical or scientific fact, he 

 cannot avoid giving an opinion arising out of the fact. 



Expenses. 



In a case tried at the Carnarvon Assizes, August T872, a 

 medical man had refused to sign the depositions which had 

 been taken before the magistrates without being guaranteed 

 a higher fee than that allowed by the county tariff. Bovill, 

 C.J., told the witness that the Act of Parliament imposed an 

 obligation upon him, and he had no power to refuse ; and 

 if he did so on another occasion, he would be liable to be 

 indicted for disobedience. The judge held that a medical 



