In the play of King Henry VI occurs an expression by Dick, the butcher, which is so short and so pointed that I may be pardoned for reproducing it in its completeness.  It runs thus:  “The first thing we do, let’s kill the lawyers.”  This is not at all the attitude of our profession toward yours.  On the contrary the most stupid charge that is ever laid to the door of the medical man is that he intentionally, or ever either by luck or intention, kills his patients.  Ere the coffin-lid closes the doctor’s harvest is reaped, but how different it is with you gentlemen. [Laughter.] Not more than a few days after the debt of nature has been paid by the unfortunate patient, your harvest—­and especially if he has had the unusual fortune to make a will—­begins, and oh! how we are sometimes tempted to envy you.  Through how many seasons this harvest will be prolonged no one can foretell.  That it will be carefully garnered to the last we can fully rely upon.

There is perhaps only one state of circumstances under which the medical man is likely to re-echo the sentiment, and that is when he steps down from the witness-stand, having served as an “expert.”  You lawyers have a duty to discharge to your clients which necessitates your “taking a part.”  Even though a man be guilty, there may be “extenuating circumstances,” and it is your right, as it is your duty, “to do all that lies within your power in his behalf.”  The “medical expert” should go upon the stand in a purely judicial frame of mind, and as a rule I believe he does.  But by the manner in which questions are propounded to him, and by the exercise of every little persuasive art incident to your calling, he is inevitably led into taking “sides.”  He is surrounded by circumstances that are to him entirely strange.  He is more or less annoyed and flurried by his surroundings, and then comes the necessity of making a categorical answer to questions that are put to him more especially upon the cross-examination, which cannot be correctly answered categorically.  Unfortunately in a profession like ours, in a science of art like ours, it often is absolutely impossible to answer a question categorically without conveying an erroneous impression to the jury.

In addition to this, we are subjected at the close of the examination to what you are pleased to term a “hypothetical question.”  The theory of this “hypothetical question” is that it embraces or expresses in a few words, and not always so very few either [laughter], the main features of the case under consideration.  In nine cases out of ten if the expert makes a direct and unqualified answer to the question he leaves an absolutely erroneous idea upon the minds of the jury, and this is the explanation of why so many experts have made answers to questions which have elicited adverse criticism.