Medicine and the Law (review)

Yasuo Otsuka and Shizu Sakai, eds. Medicine and the Law. Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on the Comparative History of Medicine--East and West, 4-10 September 1994, Susono-shi, Shizuoka, Japan. Tokyo: Ishiyaku EuroAmerica, 1998. xvi + 256 pp. Ill. $28.00.

The Taniguchi Foundation in Japan sponsored an international symposium on "the Comparative History of Medicine--East and West" annually from 1976 to 1998, and also sponsored the publication of the proceedings. This volume, stemming from the nineteenth symposium in 1994, contains nine fascinating essays by a group of international scholars on the interaction of medicine and the law in several Western as well as Eastern countries in different historical periods--from ancient Greece to contemporary mainland China. Five papers are on the West: the social and noncodified legal role of medical practitioners--their responsibility and liability--in ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantium (Karl-Heinz Leven); the state regulation of medical practice, and the role of medicine in the administration of justice in eighteenth-century England (Catherine Crawford); the way in which medicine and medical experts were used in criminal law in nineteenth-century Scotland (M. Anne Crowther); the perspective of the medico-psychological sciences in nineteenth-century Germany on heredity, criminals, criminal behavior, and evil (Peter Becker); and the social forces that shaped the anti-compulsory vaccination movement in nineteenth-century England (Shin Utsugi). The other four essays are on the East: the development of the death inquiry system in Japan, and the Western influence on that development (Tatsuya Fujimiya); the role of medical experts' perception of insanity in the origin of the first Japanese mental health legislation in 1990 (Yoji Nakatani); the structural forces and Japanese influence in the development of medical insurance law in South Korea from 1963 to 1989 (Jong-Chan Lee); and an outline of laws and regulations concerning medicine and health in the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1994 (Liu Jihui).

To be precise, however, this book is not an East-West comparative history of forensic medicine, as its subtitle suggests. There exist a lot of historical works on the relationship of medicine and the law, a very important area in the sociocultural history of medicine; it is the intended cross-cultural or cross-national historical comparison that makes this book unique and especially attractive. But readers who approach this volume with that interest in mind are bound to be disappointed, because there is little East-West comparison here. "Essays on Medicine and the Law in Europe and East Asia" would be a more accurate title. None of the authors has attempted to directly and explicitly address his or her topic from an East-West comparative perspective, except for Fujimiya, who has tried to compare the Japanese death inquiry system with the Anglo-American and European types. The unfortunate absence of East-West comparative analysis in this volume does not mean that there are not significant issues in medicine and the law calling for cross-cultural historical comparison. On the contrary, every major topic that has been discussed in this volume--such as the social role of healers, eugenic law, vaccination, mental health legislation, and medical insurance--certainly needs serious, in-depth East-West historical comparative inquiries.

On the one hand, simply putting essays concerning different cultures or societies together does not constitute cross-cultural or cross-national historical comparison; if it did, such texts as Fielding H. Garrison's Introduction to the History of Medicine (1913), Arturo Castiglioni's History of Medicine (1941), and Erwin H. Ackerknecht's Short History of Medicine (1955) could all be counted as works in the East-West comparative history of medicine because each of them included chapter(s) on medicine in the East. On the other hand, putting studies on the West and the East together is the first...