The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence, by Alfred Swaine Taylor. In 2 Volumes. Edited by Thomas Stevenson.

Perfectly readable as a series of true crime reports, Alfred Swaine Taylor's The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence is the mature statement of Victorian forensic medicine by the man long regarded as its leading authority. Across these substantial volumes Taylor consolidates decades of medico‑legal experience, offering a systematic account of how medical evidence should be gathered, interpreted, and presented in courts of law. The work covers the full range of medico-legal investigation: the diagnosis of death and its causes; the interpretation of wounds and the identification of weapons; the detection and effects of mineral and vegetable poisons; the medical evidence in sexual offences; the complex determination of live birth and infant death in infanticide cases; the assessment of insanity in relation to criminal responsibility; and the identification of persons from skeletal, anatomical, and circumstantial evidence. Taylor also treats civil matters; legitimacy, impotence, sterility, malpractice, with the same insistence on careful observation and sober inference. The 1883 edition incorporates revisions prompted by new toxicological techniques, refinements in chemical testing, and recent case law. Far from a dry compendium of procedures, Taylor's work opens a window onto the full, unsettling theatre of Victorian life and death. Each chapter moves between laboratory bench and courtroom, showing how a single body might carry traces of struggle, secrecy, fear, or intent; how a household tragedy could become a legal riddle; and how the smallest physical clue, a bruise, a fibre, a chemical trace, might overturn an entire narrative. The result is a book that reads as a continuous procession of human stories: crimes born of impulse or calculation, domestic catastrophes, contested identities, and the fragile boundary between reason and madness. Its interest lies not only in the science but in the moral and social world that science is asked to illuminate. 20 pages, 727 pages; 14 pages, 657 pages, with index, 16 page publisher's catalogue. Original burgandy cloth, gilt lettered spines. Foxed title page to volume 1, and occassionally elsewhere, but otherwise really very sound and quite clean volumes, in a typical robust late Victorian binding. Size: 14.5 x 22 cms. Category: Antiquarian & Rare; New Arrivals; This item may require more postage than the rates shown for delivery outside the UK. If extra postage is required we will contact you before processing your order and you will be given the details and option to decline the extra cost. Cosmo Books : 29 years on ABE, 47 years taking care of customers. A bookseller you can rely on. …