The Law and Experiment

Abstract

EXPERIMENTS may be performed upon inanimate objects; upon animals; and upon human beings, either dead or alive. I will limit myself to experiments upon living human beings. The legal responsibility of a person who undertakes such experiments is a branch of the law of negligence. I do not propose to discuss the general principles of the law which regulates the liability of medical men. The Society has already heard the able and exhaustive discussion of this topic in the paper read by Dr Douglas Cowburn.] It will not be out of place, however, to remind the Society of the general rule, which was so well stated by Lord Lyndhurst in the case of R. v. Webb (I M. and R. 405). He said: "There is no difference between a licensed physician or surgeon and a person acting as a physician or surgeon without licence. In either case, if a party having a competent degree of skill and knowledge makes an accidental mistake in his treatment of a patient, through which mistake death ensues, he is not thereby guilty of manslaughter; but if a person totally ignorant of the science of medicine takes on himself to administer a . . . . dangerous remedy to one labouring under disease, and death ensues in consequence .... then he is guilty of manslaughter." The same principle applies if the injury stops short of death; it also applies when the patient or his relatives bring an action for damages.