What is Medical Jurisprudence?

Medical Jurisprudence

“Medicolegal” is the term, which incorporates the basics of two sister professions i.e. Medicine and Law. Everybody talks about “the law” but few, aside from lawyers, judges and law teachers, have more than the vaguest notion of what constitutes “law”. The average layman often has about as much accurate information about “the law” as he has about medicine–or life on Venus. And, unfortunately, two professional groups suffer from more ignorance of law and medicine than is good for them: lawyers, at least those who do not constantly deal with medical issues in their legal practice, know very little about the medical profession and its problems, physicians frequently comprehend too little about the law and how it affects them in the practice of their profession.

Medicolegal experts can provide a link between these two professions for their smooth & effective functioning in a scientific manner. The physician meets the law at every turn. He confronts it when, as the treating doctor, he is subpoenaed as a witness in a personal injury lawsuit, he meets it when his aid is sought as an expert in connection with a claim that another member of his profession has been negligent and when he is faced in his office or clinic by a narcotic addict, a man with a gunshot wound, or a young couple seeking a blood test. He is face–to–face with the law when he is required to render an aggravating array of governmental reports or to preserve physical evidence for the benefit of a law enforcement agency. The physician, in fact, finds a great deal of the law intensely irritating, often because he is not absolutely clear as to its purpose.

The following subjects deal with all the above aspects of Law and medicine.

Forensic Medicine
Medical Jurisprudence
Toxicology

The terms Forensic Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence are used in the practice of Law and Medicine respectively. These two terms are not synonymous.

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