APPENDIX. 195 
doubts about the matter at issue, it is his duty to express 
them, and not allow them'to be extorted from him piecemeal 
by a series of questions. 
The replies should be made in simple language, free from 
technicality. If medical men could be made aware of the 
ridicule which they thus bring on their evidence, otherwise 
good, they would at once strive to dispense with such lan- 
guage. A witness is perhaps unconsciously led to speak as 
if he were addressing a medical debating club, instead of 
plain men like the ‘members .of a common jury, who are 
wholly ignorant of the meaning of medical terms, and 
barristers who are but imperfectly acquainted with them. 
There are few Assizes which do not afford many illustrations 
of the injury done to scientific evidence and the clear under- 
standing of a case, by the technical language in which it is 
given. A Court may be told that the “zzteguments were 
reflected from the thorax, and the .cos¢a/ cartilages laid bare, 
when a wound was found which had penetrated through the 
anterior medzastinum,” and had involved the arch of the 
aorta, etc. A simple cut in the skin is described as “an 
incision in the integuments.” In a case of alleged child 
murder, a medical witness ‘being asked for a plain opinion 
of the cause of death, said that it was owing “to atelectasis 
and a general engorgement of the pulmonary tissue.” Ona 
trial for an assault which took place at the .Assizes, some 
years since, a surgeon, in giving his evidence, informed the 
Court that, on examining the prosecutor, he found him 
suffering from a severe contusion of the integuments under 
the left orbit, with great extravasation of blood and ecchy- 
mosis in the surrounding cellular tissue, which was in a 
tumefied state. There was also considerable abrasion of the 
cuticle. “¥adge: You mean, I suppose, that the man had 
a bad black eye? Wtness; Yes. Fudge: Then why not 
say so at once?” 
This is not science but pedantry, and if such language is 
