44 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
His lordship stated— 
ts That the profession to which he had himself the honour 
to belong was frequently much mixed up with,, and indebted 
for assistance, to the medical, and there was no profession 
for which he felt greater esteem than the medical. Indeed, 
there was no one who did not feel gratitude towards that 
admirable profession whose task of love it was to assuage 
the tortures of pain and to restore the afflicted to health. 
The most important issues frequently turned upon medical 
evidence. Questions of life and death ; questions of property 
where everything rested upon the medical testimony to the 
capacity or otherwise of testators to make wills. They 
might rely upon it that it was of the greatest possible im¬ 
portance in the elucidation of the truth, that medical wit¬ 
nesses should understand the bearing of the evidence they 
were giving. They had all heard at some time or other of the 
remarks that were made as to the frequently contradictory 
nature of scientific evidence. One set of scientific witnesses 
were called to prove one side of a case, and another set of 
equaliy scientific witnesses were then called to contradict 
the first, and to give a completely different complexion to 
the facts. He begged their attention to that well-known 
state of things, and he assured them that it might be 
obviated. It frequently arose from the fact that, although 
not one gentleman could be found who would wilfully and 
deliberately enter a witness box to pervert the truth, or to 
state that which was not true, yet medical men were apt to 
identify themselves with the cases on which they were con¬ 
sulted, somewhat as lawyers did with their clients; and 
although the medical man gave his opinion according to the 
best of his judgment to the person who first consulted him, 
he could not help feeling a sort of desire to carry that person 
through all subsequent proceedings. He thus, without 
knowing it, became interested in maintaining a particular 
view of the case. Now he earnestlv entreated his youno- 
medical friends to endeavour to divest themselves of these 
feelings of preference, and to remember that they were called 
upon to aid courts of justice in arriving at sound, and true, 
and just conclusions. The next point to which he begged 
to call their attention was the necessity for using the plainest 
possible language in giving evidence, carefully avoiding- 
technical and scientific terms, and all such displays of 
learning as might seem pedantic. Such displays laid wit¬ 
nesses open to the ridicule of the lawyers on the side opposed 
to that which the pedantic evidence favoured. It was there- 
