Medicolegal judgments

In the BMJ (subscription required) Dalrymple profiles an accomplished, but forgotten, doctor:
Even eminent people are soon forgotten, and I don’t suppose that the name of Sir John Collie (1862-1935) will mean much to most readers, even though he was knighted twice, first for his medical services to the Metropolitan Water Board, and second for his medical services during the first world war.
….
His obituary in the BMJ was not such as one might wish for oneself (BMJ 1935;1:807, doi:10.1136/bmj.1.3875.807). Although he was really very kind, said the obituarist, some people sent to him for examination were so frightened that they were left almost paralysed, if not by the industrial accident that had brought them there, then by the prospect of the encounter.
The trouble is, of course, that fraud and malingering really do exist, and unless they be counted as diseases in themselves a doctor sometimes has to pass judgment on them. Collie’s book, Medico-legal Examinations and the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1906 (1912) elaborates on this at some length, in an excellent prose style.

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