116) and the practitioner who ventures to give his judgment on such an occasion, without adequate data, will render himself contemptible in the eyes of the profession, and dishonest in the opinion of the public.
Whether they were inflicted during life?—In discriminating between a wound inflicted upon the living body, and one which has been artfully occasioned after death, for the purpose of embarrassing judicial inquiry, it will be essential to observe, whether any hemorrhage has taken place, externally, or internally, and, moreover, to ascertain whether the blood so effused had coagulated. An instructive illustration of this point is furnished in the very extraordinary trial[1] of Green, Berry, and Hill in the year 1678, for the murder of Sir Edmonsbury Godfrey, a zealous protestant magistrate, during the pretended popish plots in the reign of Charles the second. It appeared from the evidence of one Praunce, that Sir Edmonsbury was strangled by a handkerchief in Somerset house, on a Saturday night, and after remaining concealed until the following Wednesday, he was carried at midnight into the fields beyond Soho, where he was thrown into a ditch, and his own sword thrust through his body, in order to excite a belief that he had committed suicide. Upon the trial, Messrs. Skillard and Cambridge, surgeons, stated that the sword must have been passed through the body after death, as there was no evacuation of blood, which must have happened had such a wound been inflicted during life.[a] With regard, however, the fact of hemorrhage being received as a test of life, a few observations may be necessary; it must be remembered that
- ↑ See State Trials, vol. ii, p. 756; see also Burnett's Hist. of his own times, vol. 1, p. 445.
