the part of a successful obstetrician with her horns, certainly a skilled surgeon
may hazard entering the womb with his knife. If large portions of an organ,--the
lung, a kidney, parts of the liver, or the brain itself,--may be lost by accident,
and the patient still live, the physician is taught the lesson of nil desperandum,
and that if possible to arrest disease of these organs before their total destruction,
the prognosis and treatment thereby acquire new and more hopeful phases.
Directly or indirectly many similar examples have also clear medicolegal bearings
or suggestions; in fact, it must be acknowledged that much of the importance
of medical jurisprudence lies in a thorough comprehension of the anomalous and
rare cases in Medicine. Expert medical testimony has its chief value in showing
the possibilities of the occurrence of alleged extreme cases, and extraordinary
deviations from the natural. Every expert witness should be able to maintain
his argument by a full citation of parallels to any remar
