Excerpt from The Testimony of Medical Experts: Annual Address of W. H. Philips, M.D., Kenton, O., Retiring President Ohio State Medical Society

It is the department of Justice with which we now have to deal, considering it merely with reference to those cases, wherein, for the proper investigation of truth, it is necessary to call in the testimony of medical experts. No other department comes so near home to the citizen as this. A few see the workings of the other departments, but the great majority are totally unacquainted with them except by hearsay. Their workings affect the people as a whole, and not as individuals. They seem far off, and their effects, though powerful, are mostly indirect and not easily described in their action. With the courts it is dif ferent. There is not a citizen in the land who does not come in contact with their operations. It is here that he is punished, that his wrongs are redressed, and his rights obtained. He is affected as an individual. He sees and hears for himself the causes by which effects are wrought upon his life, his liberty, his property, or his reputation. The fact need scarcely be pointed out that where such im portant interests are at stake, the instrumentalities em ployed in securing justice should be as perfect as possible. The great progress which has been made in the last cen tury in judicial science abundantly attests the general ap preciation of this fact by the English and American people. The matter of medical expert testimony furnishes, how ever, an exception. In this a conservatism has been dis played which evinces either a marvelous confidence in the infallible wisdom of their ancestors who founded the pres ent methods of procedure, or a neglect utterly at variance with the radical and reformatory ideas of the nation.

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