48 
Pharmaceutical  Meeting. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
I    January,  1905. 
subjective,  and  represents  the  state  of  mind  of  the  witness  and 
nothing  else.  As  such  it  will  have  weight  with  judge  and  jury 
according  to  the  estimate  they  make  as  to  the  fitness  and  capacity 
of  the  witness  to  form  opinions  upon  facts  of  the  order  submitted. 
One  great  difficulty  arises  from  the  necessity  to  avoid  technical 
terminology  in  matters  that  cannot  be  made  entirely  clear  without 
it,  but  the  slighting  opinion  often  expressed  or  intimated  as  to 
the  value  or  sincerity  of  medical  and  pharmaceutic  expert  testi- 
mony is  but  partly  due  to  this  or  to  the  obscurity  of  the  question 
concerning  which  they  testify.  It  is  in  part  to  be  attributed  to  the 
willingness  of  experts  to  combine  the  discordant  functions  of  advo- 
cate and  witness;  in  part  to  the  fact  that  experts  do  not  use  suffi- 
cient care  in  framing  their  answers  to  avoid  the  appearance  of 
giving  a  positive  judgment  when  the  facts  are  insufficient  for  posi- 
tiveness;  in  part  to  the  fact  that  experts  permit  themselves  to 
answer  questions  that  can  have  no  object  but  to  confuse  the  minds 
of  the  jury;  questions  that  are  not  relevant,  questions  that  are 
simply  captious  criticism  of  unimportant  details  of  the  testimony  of 
others,  or  questions  that  twist  absence  of  knowledge  into  knowledge 
of  absence.  The  expert  should  distort  nothing,  magnify  nothing, 
minimize  nothing;  assert  as  positive  nothing  doubtful,  throw  doubt 
upon  nothing  certain;  introduce  nothing  irrelevant,  suppress  noth- 
ing material.  He  should  say  nothing  that  he  would  be  unwilling  to 
defend  before  a  learned  society ;  he  should  be  as  frank  upon  cross- 
examination  as  upon  direct  examination ;  his  efforts  should  be  bent 
to  elucidate  truth,  and  not  to  score  points  for  or  against  either  side. 
The  court  should  restrict  examinations  to  matters  having  actual 
bearing  upon  the  cause  at  trial,  but  the  testimony  of  the  expert 
should  be  given  only  with  reference  to  scientific  accuracy,  and  not 
with  reference  to  its  effect  upon  the  verdict. 
Among  those  taking  part  in  the  discussion  of  the  address  were 
Dr.  Lowe,  President  French,  Mr.  Wilbert,  Dr.  Marshall,  and  Mr. 
Beringer. 
Referring  to  the  effects  of  the  metallic  poisons,  Mr.  French  said 
that  in  an  experience  of  sixty  odd  years  the  firm  with  which  he  is 
connected,  namely  Samuel  H.  French  &  Co.,  paint  manufacturers, 
had  never  had  a  case  o  ~  lead  poisoning,  and  this  he  attributed  to  the 
fact  that  the  workers  in  dry  lead  are  advised  to  use  olive  oil  freely 
with  their  food.  He  said  that  his  firm  had  recommended  this  pre- 
caution to  lead  manufacturers  throughout  the  United  States. 
