GLANDS AND CRIME.

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19816, 21 February 1936, Page 12

GLANDS AND CRIME.

ADVICE FOR BENCH. The influence of glands on crlm* was emphasised by Lord Dawson of . Penn recently, says the Daily TeleI graph. He suggested the appointI lent of medical and scientific men as : assessors on the judicial bench, as •vas done in nautical and other technical matters. Speaking at the annual dinner of the Medico-Legal.Society, in London, he said: “Contact between law and medicine must become closer. The link between body and mind is to be found in internal glands, and the merest trace of difference between this secretion and that secretion may produce such notable changes in conduct and behaviour as really to affect responsibility/’ Health and illness, for the doctor, had their parallel in justice and injustice for the lawyer, Lord Dawson continued. If it were right that the law should protect society from the damage produced by crime and mental disorder, it was equally right that medicine should protect society and ‘he future generations from the transmission of disease; and it was in this connection that he made the suggesion for the provision of medical assessors. Lord Dawson was replying to the | toast of “Medicine and the Law.’* proI posed by the Master of the Society i of Opothecaries, Sir William Willcox. j who said that law and medicine were I becoming more and more united, and I that medical psychology was playing I an increasing part in the administra- ; tion of justice. They saw, in the development of eugenics, the suggestion, as in Germany, of medical certificates for marriage, sterilisation of the unfit, and ;ho Bill in the Honse of Lord* on the subject of euthanasia. Mr Claude Mullins remarked that lawyers were always active in reforming everything but the law. Sir Edward Tindal Atkinson, expressing appreciation of the valuable results of “forensic medicine” in connection with legal investigations, said that the ideal of a great national Medico-Legal Institute was a sound one.