1.1: Forensic Medicine

• Forensic medicine — that branch of medicine deals with applying medical and paramedical scientific knowledge to the knowledge of both civil and criminal law to aid the administration of justice.

• Forensic — derived from the Latin word forensis, which implies something pertaining to the forum, the communal meeting or marketplace where those with public responsibility discussed civic and legal matters, and where justice was dispensed and indeed seen by the public to be dispensed.

  • It essentially conveys any issue related to the debate in relation to medical matters that can occur in a court of law.

1.2: Former Terminologies

• Forensic medicine was earlier known as Medical Jurisprudence.

• Medical Police — a specialist in this discipline was supposed to be knowledgeable in matters of public health and hygiene, industrial health, epidemics of disease, and other matters, which nowadays pertains together to the specialty of Public Health Medicine.

• Social Medicine — medical matters related to employment and includes such other, matters as disease and injuries acquired at work, compensation for such, through insurance companies, and so on.

• State Medicine — the code of medical ethics and practice developed to regulate the code of conduct for registered medical practitioners, to guide and regulate the professional activities of the doctors and to standardize and supervise the medical profession.

• Legal Medicine — preferred and accepted to explain the interaction of professions of medicine and law.

Main Aspects of Legal Medicine

1. Forensic Pathology — is practiced by those who are able to carry out autopsies and who have the appropriate level of knowledge and expertise to distinguish the various pathological processes which may occur in the human body as a consequence of aging, natural processes, disease, and injuries of various types.

2. Clinical Forensic Medicine — deals with those who are still alive and on whom a medicolegal opinion is required.

   • This includes those who have been traumatized physically and sexually, those who are under the influence of alcohol and drugs in relation to driving, human rights abuses, etc.