Abstract
WHETHER Chinamen are or are not believers in the principle that it is better that nine guilty persons should escape rather than that one innocent person should suffer, they do at all events, by their manner of conducting inquests, leave open a wide door for the escape of murderers. A deeply-rooted repugnance to dissection of the human body and a consequently slight acquaintance with anatomy, coupled with an entire ignorance of the action of poisons, deprive coroners of every means of arriving at decisions except those furnished by outward symptoms and appearances. From early times, however, the importance attaching to human life has been recognised by the custom of holding inquests in cases of sudden death, and various works have been published embodying all the knowledge available on the subject to assist coroners in their duty of investigation. The best-known of these was the Se yuen luh, or “Record of the washing away of wrongs,” which was given to the world in the thirteenth century, and which, under the same title, subsequently received the imprimatur of the officers of the Board of Punishments, who, in the exercise of their legislative function, issued it as a manual for coroners. In this work is expounded the whole system of Chinese medical jurisprudence, of which the following is a slight sketch.
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DOUGLAS, R. Coroners' Science in China . Nature 27, 612–614 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/027612a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/027612a0