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II. The Doctor and the Law

Lester S. King, MD

JAMA. 1987;257(16):2204.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

THE PHYSICIAN today may dread any contact with the legal profession, but a century ago the relationships between physicians and the law were at least as bad, if not worse. Indeed, in 1885 the president of the American Medical Association, Henry F. Campbell, devoted most of his inaugural address to the subject.¹ He pointed to three separate areas of distress.

Physicians were frequently called on to provide expert testimony in court. More often than not, such an occasion could be extremely "mortifying" to their pride and self-respect. The lawyers showed but little respect for the abilities or rectitude of a physician. His proper position would be that of an amicus curiae, an impartial "instructor" of the court on scientific questions. Instead, the physician was often made to appear only as a partisan witness. "The light of scientific truth," said Campbell with impressive rhetoric, "is even sometimes suspected as coming . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the American Medical Association, Chicago.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to the American Medical Association, 535 N Dearborn St, Chicago, IL 60610 (Dr King).

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