PRINCIPLES OF FORENSIC MEDICINE. BY WILLIAM A. GUY, M.B. CANTAB., F.R.S. FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, PROFESSOR OF HYGIENE, AND LATE PROFESSOR OF FORENSIC MEDICINE, CONSULTING PHYSICIAN TO KING'S COLLEGE HOSPITAL, ETC. ETC. AND DAVID FERRIER, M.D. EDIN. MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, FOURTH EDITION, RIVED, ENLARGED, AND COPIOUSLY ILLUSTRATED BY WOOD PREFACE ΤΟ THE FOURTH EDITION. THE original aim of this work was to furnish, for teacher and learner alike, a Text-book, in which principles and results should be clearly and briefly stated, disencumbered of minute details, and containing only such illustrative cases as could, for the most part, be compressed into a narrow compass. But this brevity and condensation were found quite consistent with an original treatment of several subjects, and with a laborious analysis of facts which others had left undigested, and therefore useless or misleading. Of such elaborate analysis, the first edition of this work contained several examples, under the heads of Personal Identity, Infanticide, Legitimacy, and Unsoundness of Mind. Some of these analyses having served their purpose of demonstrating the uselessness of certain tests and standards of comparison, were omitted from the second edition; many illustrative cases were also either curtailed or set aside, thus leaving room for a considerable number of wood engravings, comprising drawings of seeds, minute structures, and chemical reactions as seen under the microscope. The second edition thus became the first English treatise on Forensic Medicine in which such illustrations were largely used. It also contained some new chemical facts and tests, arising out of the method then recently suggested, of obtaining sublimates of arsenic and mercury, on a |
