Description

The physician and author John Ayrton Paris (1785-1856), several of whose other medical and popular works have been reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection, and his co-author J. S. M. Fonblanque (1787-1865), barrister and administrator, published this three-volume work in 1823. It remained almost the only work on the topic of medical jurisprudence for many years. The authors define the term as 'a science by which medicine, and its collateral branches, are made subservient to the construction, elucidation, and administration of the laws; and to the preservation of public health'. Volume 2 continues the discussion of homicide in all its various aspects (including suspicious deaths which might in fact be accidental): suffocation, drowning, hanging, and battery. Proceedings at coroners' inquests are described, and there is a very extensive section on the various types of poison.