A jury of matrons.

In particular circumstances, the civil and criminal laws of England required that a litigant or a prisoner convicted of a capital offence should be examined to determine whether she was pregnant. Such efforts to solve a medical problem for legal reasons illustrate, among other things, one of the interfaces between the two disciplines and their interdependence when confronted with a common problem. This paper reviews some typical English cases.1 Once the classical physical signs ofpregnancy had appeared, there was ordinarily no problem in diagnosing it.2 When the law required that a woman be examined for the signs indicating pregnancy, the examination was undertaken by such more or less expert individuals as a medical man, accoucheur, midwife, matron, or other lay persons.3 The choice by the court depended on the law and its interpretation; these, in turn, were influenced ultimately by such factors as tradition, the relative authority at a given time of various medical and lay practitioners, and their availability. The diagnosis, even when that of an experienced physician or surgeon, was far from infallible.4 James Blundell, Professor of Obstetricy at Guy's Hospital, ruefully remarked in 1834, "The most certain mode of knowing whether a woman be in a state of gestation or not, is by waiting until the term of nine months is completed."5 Not until the nineteenth century was there much advance in the medical diagnosis of pregnancy.6 Inevitably, the midwife, matron, or medical man testifying as an expert witness in a court of law sometimes revealed uncertainty or was proved at a later time to have been in error.7