Introduction

Medical Police, Political Medicine, State Medicine, Public Hygiene, Police of Health, and Medical Jurisprudence, comprise the acts of a legislature or Government, and magistracy, for the conservation of public health, and also the enactment of laws for the regulation of the practice of the medical profession, and the duty of medical practitioners in aiding the legislature in forming just laws, and public tribunals in the administration of justice. Medical Jurisprudence, or Legal Medicine, is a science by which medicine and its branches, are rendered subservient to the construction, elucidation, and administration of the laws for the preservation of public health. This term is considered by some writers as best calculated to express, in the most comprehensive manner, the application of the medical sciences to the purposes of law. It has been divided into Forensic, Legal, Judiciary, and Judicial medicine, comprising the opinions and evidence and into Medical Police or State Medicine, comprising all medical opinions and precepts which inform the legislature and magistracy in constructing the laws, and in enforcing them for the preservation of the public health. Both these divisions are included by the Germans in the term State Medicine. I have employed both in the construction of this work, as I have enumerated the laws relating to the profession, and to the preservation of public health, together with all medicao-legal inquiries. I have preferred this arrangement to any other proposed by medico-legal writers in this country, as it is the most comprehensive.