think that if we had an expression from our council upon that subject, that we would be better prepared to determine what would be best to do, for it is a little novel that this should be a part of the transactions of the State Medical Society, and it may be so regarded by the common people; I cannot tell. I think we had better proceed cautiously, and if our council should be clear upon the point that there was no tendency to conspiracy in it if the people would acquiesce in our conclusions, which no doubt they would if there was no conspiracy, then we might go forward.

Dr. Hitchcock-I suppose this is an experience meeting. Dr. Jerome I have been several times chosen defendant, doctor, and I know all about it.

Dr. Hitchcock-Recent experience is of more value than old experience that is forgotten. It seems to me that the greatest desideratum is to protect the honor of the profession. If a man is accused of malpractice, don't have other physicians run to him and say, "Well, I don't know; they would not say so much about it without there was some truth in it. I guess he has been higher estimated than he ought to have been," and this thing, and that, and the other, but let every man stand up and not say a word derogatory, but say, "Let the truth come, and let him stand on the truth, just what it is." And then, when the doctors are called as witnesses, don't let them prevaricate; don't let them, even if they themselves are implicated in the same case, and if they don't get the damage on the doctor on whom it is charged. I say we ought to stand up and defend the man against whom it is charged, even though it falls on us. That is the kind of honor that will defend the profession, and that is the kind of honor that will do better than the money that shall be offered to any man. Then we will be a band of brothers. Then we will stand above the community, too; and then we shall not be sued much for malpractice. Oh, I tell you this comes of the insinuations from other doctors more often than from any insinuation from the patient himself. Some doctors smell around. I remember once upon a time a young sprig thought he would bring a suit against me. They wrote that unless I came and paid three hundred dollars, suit would be brought against me immediately. I then directed my attention to the person who they claimed had been injured. I said to him, "Now you have been about this community trying to get help. Have you found any help since you entered this suit?" "No," he said, he hadn't. Said I, "You won't. Now let me give you two pennies, and you receipt to me in full." The suit was already begun. I gave

him the two pennies and he gave me a receipt in full for all damages and the lawyer had to pay the costs. That was the first suit I had. Now then, I know that suit was brought by a doctor smelling around. Did you ever see a decayed piece of beef? Did you ever see it partly covered up with earth? Look at it; see it wiggle; look at it sharply. There are some stink-bugs down under there wiggling and digging around under it. Now you go and get an injured hip; you see it wiggle; look sharply: there are some stink-bugs of doctors around there wiggling. [Applause.] That is the way malpractice suits are brought. Now I tell you what it is, gentlemen, it is only this sterling integrity which every man ought to have that will defend us. [Applause.]

Dr. Parmenter then rendered the following report of the Judicial Council:

To the President and Members of the Michigan State Medical Society: The council met May 16, 1878, at 3:45 P. M.

Present Wm. Brodie, G. K. Johnson, J. R. Thomas, F. K. Owen, Edward Cox, and W. Parmenter.

Organized by electing Dr. Brodie Chairman and Dr. Parmenter Secretary.

During this, the only session of the council, Dr. Cox resigned, and Dr. E. S. Snow was elected to fill the vacancy by the Society, and immediately took his seat in the council.

The only matter referred to the council was a charge by Dr. E. Twiss, of Athens, against Drs. Dunster, McLean, Herdman, and Palmer, for aiding and abetting the graduation of students in irregular medicine.

The Secretary was instructed to report, in the matter of the charges made by Dr. Twiss against Drs. Dunster, McLean, Herdman, and Palmer, that there being no overt act alleged in the charge or the specifications, the paper be returned to Dr. Twiss with leave to amend the same and present it at some future meeting of the council.

W. PARMENTER, Secretary of the Judicial Council.

On motion of Dr. Brodie, the Society adjourned.

GEO. E. RANNEY, M. D.
Recording Secretary.

9

ANNUAL ADDRESS

OF PRESIDENT FOSTER PRATT, M. D., OF KALAMAZOO.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Medical jurisprudence is the joint product of medical and legal knowledge and reason. Its seminal principle is medicalits form is legal-and its purpose is justice. As the stereoscope gives body and bold relief to a surface of lights and shadows, so the binocular observation, by the two professions, of many questions in jurisprudence, gives due shape and definite proportion to the legal result. But differences of professional vision and disagreements in professional impression, often defeat all efforts to harmonize our dual observations of the same object. To obtain a harmonious and satisfactory legal result from our professional stereoscopes, three things, at least, are essential: first, a clear, distinct and definite mental photograph of the subject; second, equal power in the professional lenses; and third, an accurate and equal adjustment of their focal axes; if, under such conditions, medico-legal jurists study their subjects in the clear, bright light of reason the result is efficacious for good and rarely productive of evil.

PROFESSIONAL DIFFERENCES.

But there are differences in the nature and purposes of the two professions which seem to impose essential and necessary differences-if not antagonisms-in our relative attitude towards many questions of common interest. Thus, law seeks for rules and precise definitions safely applicable to all or a majority of cases; medicine neither has such rules nor tolerates them, because, in medicine, they are not only absurd, but dangerous; hence, on questions of forensic medicine, lawyers and doctors are often at variance-the lawyer is content if he bring his case or its facts within an established rule-the doctor, discarding the rule, is content if he establish the essential fact. In medicine the pathological fact or condition is judged with sole reference to its effect on the individual; in law the same fact is judged with reference to its effect on the individual as a

social unit.

The doctor observes a fact with reference to the health of the man-the lawyer observes the same fact with reference to the mental capacity or the moral responsibility of the man. The doctor aims to benefit the man-the lawyer to benefit society. The doctor judges of men, sick of the same disease, by unlike rules, because men are physiologically unlike-but the lawyer judges men by like rules, because before the law all men are equal if not alike. In law certain precise, perhaps arbitrary, distinctions are possible and necessary and wise that in medicine are neither possible nor necessary nor wise. For example: puberty by law is inferred or declared to exist at the age of fourteen years. In medical physiology such a rule is not necessary, nor is it by any means true. Again: in law one who is 7,649 days old is an infant, a boy, a minor; while one who is 7,650 days old is a man-a distinction which in medicine is neither necessary nor useful.

And so, it seems to be a necessity, growing out of the nature of the two professions, that the medical idea must be mainly special, while the legal idea must be mainly general; and the two standpoints, from which and the two purposes for which the two professions observe the same facts, seem to impose a necessary difference in many of their conclusions, -a difference that too often becomes the occasion of wide disagreements and unseemly disputes. These can be avoided, if each will study the points from which and the purposes for which the other observes and judges the matter in controversy.

INSANITY THE CHIEF TOPIC OF MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE.

Chief among the questions that lie within the domain of medical jurisprudence,-chief in its importance and chief in its intrinsic difficulties, -is the great question of INSANITY. It is an important question, because it signifies the destruction, more or less complete, not only of that grand attribute of reason which is man's chief glory and the guide of his individual life, but also because it is the destruction of that moral accountability by which, as a member of the social compact, his irrational infractions of human law must be measured and judged. It is a difficult question, primarily and mainly, because, as a malady of the mind, it is an almost inexplicable disturbance of an utterly inexplicable attribute of human

nature.

THE ESSENCE OF MIND UNDEFINABLE.

That undefined and undefinable, but positive and essential human attribute that we call mind or soul, though carefully

studied in all ages, has hitherto successfully concealed its essence and the nature of its physical union in him who holds it as his highest endowment and chief glory. Though he date its advent at the birth and its exit at the death of the body, he cannot, of himself, tell "whence it cometh or whither it goeth." Scalpels, chemical tests and microscopes alike fail to disclose the vital spark," whether they question "the quick or the dead;" for in the dead it is absent; and if these curious intruders invade its living home, it is only to find the house warm, but the tenant gone. Though from the beginning it has had, in "these clay tenements," a "local habitation and a name,' the tenant has never, in all the ages, been compelled to disclose its tenure or to defend its possession. Though spirit and flesh, as tenant and tenement, have often struggled with each other to the death, they have never yet stood face to face, for judgment, before any earthly tribunal. Though the tenant often stands, in spiritual grandeur and triumph, upon the very wrecks of its fleshly habitation, all attempted revenges, by the crazy tenement, on its viewless tenant, only debase its own godlike functions into those of a gibbering ghoul or a dancing satyr. How presumptuous is dogmatism, and how becoming is humility in such a presence! The thoughtful observer of such mental phenomena, however curious and anxious he may be to penetrate their mysteries, like the ancient lawgiver, beside the bush that burned and was not consumed, will reverently hear and obey the voice of hidden power: "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground!"

REASON CAN BE INVESTIGATED ONLY BY REASON.

But though we be ignorant of the essence of mind, even as we are ignorant of the essence of wind, of sunlight, and of the thunder-bolt, it is permitted us, by reason, to investigate reason and to learn some of its laws of action and of physical association; and though the soul jealously evade the physical eye, even when armed with microscopic power, it coyly but kindly reveals the laws of its operations to the introspective eye of the mind, armed and aided only by reason. Though it never permits the withdrawal of the curtain from that marriage bed where matter weds with spirit, it does permit the ideal or intellectual children of that marriage to move in the stately phalanx of reason, or with the sportive graces of imag. ination, before the scrutinizing "mind's eye" of every Hamlet and Horatio. And if, among these ideal children of the mind, some are deformed or crippled or unwholesome or uncanny or unhappy, we are permitted to know, at least in part, the