Medico-Legal Experiences in the Sudan

Abstract

(}ENTLEMEN,-In thus addressing you I feel that I have to some extent placed myself in a false position, for I have no claim to be considered a medical jurist, and since my student days have never been able to make a close study of legal medicine. At the same time, your President has rendered matters easy for me owing to the title which he has selected for my paper, while I can at least assert that I have always been attracted by the subject. I was initiated into its mysteries by the late Sir Henry Littlejohn; and even if medical jurisprudence had not in itself been a study of surpassing interest, he would have made it"so, for he had the magic touch which puts life into dry facts, and knew well also how to point a moral and to adorn a tale. Professor Littlejohn has termed my short address" Medico-Legal Experiences in the Sudan." I cannot say these have been very extensive, but they have been sufficiently varied, and naturally differ considerably from those which fall to your lot in this country. I have not much to tell you about the medico-legal aspect of tropical diseases, but think it advisable to say a few words about pellagra in this connection, especially as pellagra is much more common in England than was at one time supposed. t