MEDICINE AND LAW

In concluding his series of Lowell Lectures, Dr. George Burgess Magrath, recently appointed incumbent of the new chair of Legal Medicine in the Harvard Medical School, outlined the striking need for expert administration of community health boards. With a vigorous denunciation of the ignorance displayed by inexpert officials, he pointed out that in many respects hope for future success in community health protection was dependent on the training of competent experts. In closing he expressed the opinion that every large medical college should provide its students with at least an elementary training in the legal aspects of medicine and should offer opportunities for advanced post-graduate study.

There can be little doubt that there is a sad lack of coordination in the practical applications of the sciences of law and medicine. One has only to examine the administration of local and state health departments. The shyster settlements of insurance claims, and the frequent examples of the inexpert application of medicine to criminal cases bear witness to the urgent need for men competent to act with knowledge and experience in both departments.

It is essential that every medical man have a clear understanding of the legal side of his profession, if he is to render service proportionate to the scope and obligations of his calling. Dr. Magrath has put the matter up to medical colleges as a matter of duty, for it is there alone that a man may hope to find the facilities to acquire such training. The Harvard Medical School has taken a great pioneering step by instituting the new chair. It should now continue the leadership by making elementary work in legal medicine a prerequisite for an M.D. degree, and by augmenting the field through additions of adequate advanced courses.