1 Gold, , Book Review. 5 Am. J. L. & Med. 27, 30 (1979)Google Scholar.

2 Sagall, & Provost, , Selected Book Releases, Annotated, 5 Am. J. L. & Med. 377, 381 (1980).Google Scholar

3 “[The advice] must be supplemented in all cases where any doubts exist, by competent legal advice from an attorney licensed in the health program’s state. Much of the advice in this guidebook, it may be noted, consists of recommendations about when to seek legal advice and for what matters.” Warren, D., A Legal Guide For Rural Health Programs 143 (1979)Google Scholar.

4 Id. at 12 (emphasis in original).

5 If the witness is not testifying as an expert, his testimony in the form of opinions or inferences is limited to those opinions or inferences which are (a) rationally based on the perception of the witness and (b) helpful to a clear understanding of his testimony or the determination of a fact in issue. Fed. R. Evid. 701.

6 See the rules cited in 7 Wigmore, Evidence § 1924 n. 2 (Chadbourn rev. 1978).

7 Warren, supra note 3, at 108.

8 Id. at 109.

9 See, e.g., D. Warren, Problems In Hospital Law—Third Edition 57-58 (1978); Warren, supra note 3, at 299-301.

10 Coeditor Curran has written that the term “legal medicine” should include “clinical medical fields … such as the treatment of criminal offenders and drug addicts in legal and correctional settings, and medicolegal-moral issues, such as abortion and euthanasia.“ Curran, , Titles in the Medicolegal Field: A Proposal for Reform, 1 Am. J. L. & Med. 1,9 (1975)Google Scholar.

11 Curran distinguishes “forensic medicine” from “legal medicine,” holding that the former should be limited to “the investigation, preparation, preservation, and presentation of evidence and medical opinion for the courts of law” and for other legal settings. Id. By far the greatest portion of the book deals with forensic medicine and science; most of the exceptions are in the psychiatric area.

12 See National Institute of Mental Health, Competency to Stand Trial and Mental Illness, Dhew Pub. No. (ADM) 74-103 (1974), a report on a project of which McGarry was Principal Investigator, and Curran was Coprincipal Investigator.

13 The reader should know that when this reviewer obtained his M.P.H., Curran was his teacher and adviser—perhaps the old word, “master,” would be even more appropriate.

14 One of the chapters on rape, Nadelson, , Notman, & Hilberman, , The Rape Experience, in Modern Legal Medicine, Psychiatry, and Forensic Science 509Google Scholar (W. Curran, A. McGarry & C. Petty eds. 1980) [hereinafter cited as Modern Legal Medicine], must be singled out for criticism. The chapter is replete with statistically unfounded assertions, misleading statements, overgeneralizations, and spurious distinctions. Worst of all, its criticisms of the law seem to presume that men are seldom accused unjustly of rape, or assailants misidentified. The authors appear to share, in this one area at least, the right wing’s impatience with the presumption of innocence.

15 For example, the part on Medicolegal Death Investigation contains specialized chapters on pediatric death, asphyxial death, thermal death, and deaths involving automobiles and aircraft.

16 Forensic Medicine: A Study in Trauma and Environmental Hazards (C. Tedeschi, W. Eckert & L. Tedeschi eds. 1977) [hereinafter cited as Forensic Medicine]: Volume 1, Mechanical Trauma; Volume 2, Physical Trauma; Volume 3, Environmental Hazards. The statement on the book jacket of Modern Legal Medicine, Psychiatry, and Forensic Science that “[t]his is the first new book on legal medicine and forensic science to be published in over 40 years” (emphasis in original) ignores this work as well as the many others on the subject that have been published since the thirties, most of which are cited in the bibliographies to the book’s chapters.

17 Helpern, Foreword, Forensic Medicine, supra note 16, at ix.

18 For example, the chapter on Thermal Deaths in the Davis book covers 36 pages. The section on Thermal Injury in the Saunders work is 74 pages and contains three separate chapters; there is yet another chapter elsewhere on Exposure to Carbon Monoxide. The Saunders set covers in depth many areas dealt with briefly or not at all in the Davis work—for example, explosions, ionizing radiation, and high or low atmospheric pressure.

19 Curran, , Law-Medicine Notes: Forensic Medical Science: The Continued Problems of Judges and Juries, 294 New Eng. J. Med. 1042, 1043 (1976)Google Scholar.

20 See, e.g., Petty & Curran, Operational Aspects of Public Medicolegal Death Investigation, in Modern Legal Medicine, supra note 14, at 51, 56-59.

21 Some of the broader questions are touched upon in Pollack, Psychiatry and the Administration of Justice, id. at 655. Pollack’s chapter stands out not only in this respect, but for the fact that, unlike the other chapters, it is very personal, at times even self-centered.

22 Curran, History and Development, id. at 1, 19; Curran, Courtroom Presentation of Forensic Scientific Evidence, id. at 1,279.

23 At times, one gets the impression that Curran is not terribly sympathetic to trial by jury in the first place. He writes, for instance:

Curran, Courtroom Presentation of Evidence in Death Cases, id. at 491, 500 (emphasis in original). Clearly, if the jury must decide on the basis of statements that they do not understand, then they are not deciding at all; the decision might as well be left to a jury of experts. But such incomprehension is not inevitable: less than two pages prior to the above-quoted statement, Curran offers some excellent suggestions as to how technical evidence may be presented so that the jury can understand. Coeditor McGarry supports the view that the laity can understand the technical issues in his field. McGarry, Operational Aspects, Training, and Qualifications in Forensic Psychiatry, id. at 643, 645. As Pollack, supra note 21, at 669, points out, “legal caution holds that the ipse dixit of experts should not be substituted for the judicial process in our democratic society and that legal decision-making should remain in the domain of the layman.“

24 Curran, Ethical Standards, in Modern Legal Medicine, supra note 14, at 36. In support of this view, Curran cites J. Frank, Courts on Trial (1949), and B. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921). Another distinguished jurist has lectured recently in a similar vein: Rifkind, The Lawyer’s Role and Responsibility in Modern Society, 20 Record of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York 534, 543-45 (1976).

25 74 Cal. App. 2d 652, 169 P.2d 442 (1946).

26 See Krause, H., Illegitimacy: Law And Social Policy 106 (1971).Google Scholar