ABSTRACT
In August 1829 the Society of Apothecaries passed a resolution enjoining candidates for its licence to apply themselves to the study of forensic medicine. The following year, the Society went further and made formal training in the subject a prerequisite for its examination.1 This enactment was a major event from the perspective of the fledgling medical science referred to variously as medical jurisprudence, legal medicine, or forensic medicine. Most medical students in London at this time sought accreditation by both the College of Surgeons and the Society of Apothecaries, and the latter corporation was examining between 400 and 450 candidates every year.2 By obliging these people to attend courses of lectures on forensic medicine, the Apothecaries’ regulation established the field in medical education and guaranteed teachers of the subject a sizeable, feepaying audience. Looking back in 1830 on the resolution that had recognized legal medicine the preceding year, the editor of the London Medical and Surgical Journal assigned the credit to medical journalism. The Apothecaries’ action, he remarked, ‘was effected by the independent medical press, which by the bye is of very recent growth amongst us’.3
