"EXPERT" TESTIMONY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 129, 1 June 1907, Page 15

"EXPERT" TESTIMONY.

The medical oxpert, the insanity specialist, tho nervous practitioner, by whatever name ho may prefer to. be callod, has conlo very much to the front during the futile proceedings in the Thaw trial. Ho is a part of the lecogniscd machinery for bamboozling a jury. Espeit medical testimony can bo purchased in any quantity and for any purpose. It seems, in fact, to be a matter ot prido with theso gentlemen no% or to agrco with one siiothcy upon any conceivable point. In this :n stance, the jury was unusually intelligent, inasmuch as it contcinpi.uo.Udly blushed aside all tho fine spun theories about brain&iorms and the like, at which tho wholo country lias been laughing. Tho insanity oxpert han long sinto been discredited by everybody who knows what his special knowledge le'illy amounts to, which is xery little indeed, but no doubt In will be inflicted upon juries in the future as in the pact, in the hope of impressing lho tv.-clvo good men and true with what is nothing mom nor less than an illicit form of special pleading. In this instance tho expert evidence v/as sometimes pecuiiaiJy flagrant. What, for instances are we to think of Dr. Wiley, who is reported as admitting on cross-examination that he did not know tho nature of tho -Romberg lest, thai he did not know whether the cardiac nerve connects with the cerebellum, nor v/heio tho pneumegasti'io norvo joins tho spinal column, nor where the dorsal rngion is situated, nor whother the pneumogastric and tho cardiac nerves are one and tho came thing. The only two books that ho had ever read on nencus diseases he had perused immediately before the trial, and he could not lomcmbcr a singlo thing that either of these authors bad written. And thia man, who does not scam to have possessed tho ordinary medical knowledges of. a. firyt-torin medical student, :s introduced to the jury as an expert in a matter of life and death, and would no doubt l»we counted as such but for tho cross-examination of Mr. Jerome, who apparently had learned overnight mox-o physiology than the expert had ever hoard of. Tho insanity specialist was a faric, a3 he usually is, but no doubt ho wit! continue yet a v/hilo to find a good market for his waves and to bo well dulled by learned counsel ns to tho point that ho is expected to prove. Kvcn where tho expert witness is conscientious and has real knowledge, it is easy to give an exaggerated -\alue to his evidence. Tho mnn who knows ono thing supremely well is apt to liavi. a rather less than average knowledge of everything else, nnd to allow h>s speciality to assume a perspective proportion out of all relation to the surrounding landscape Tho hairdresser who is given carte blanche to work his will is certain to turn out hia \ictim oiled and perfumed and blushed like a bartender on a holiday. Tho expert assistant in the shoe store is incapable of tying a shoe without inflicting a martyrdom upon the wearer, and no optician ovev yet failed to find a. visual defect that needed' a skilled remedy So it is uIJ down the line. The zeal of the oxpert mu»t be discounted nnd balanced by tho uano common sunso of tho man who is not an expert. Tho departments of modern life are so interwoven thai it i 3 impossible to phicc any of them in water-light compartmonts, but that is precisely what tho expert tries to do. As a result, he produces something grotesque', something that is falsilicd by all those other things of which he has taken no notice because they were outside his sphere. The insanity expert has his uses and will continue to have them if he is not workod too hard and paid too much, but in the present proceedings nnd in many othoii lie hur. come perilously near the legion of farce. — Aigonaut.