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14 Medico-Legal & Criminological Rev. 1 (1946)

handle is hein.journals/medlgjr14 and id is 1 raw text is: THE MEDICO-LEGAL AND CRIMINOLOGICAL REVIEW Vol. XIV. January-June, 1946 Nos. I & 2 MEDICO-LEGAL ASPECTS OF CIVILIAN AIR-RAID CASUALTIES* By T. MERVYN JONES, M.A., LL.M. (Cantab.), LL.B. (Wales) IN air raids on this country civilians were injured by bombs and other missiles, persons on Civil Defence duty became ill or were injured, and both in large numbers were killkd, often collectively in the same incident. The civilian, or if he later died, his relative, in order to get a pension award had to prove that he suffered a war injury; the Civil Defence volunteer similarly had to prove a war service injury; and the relatives of the collectively killed had to establish the exact order or sequence of their deaths in order to administer their estates. All, in some instances, had to resort to the Courts and out of their decisions have emerged three medico-legal issues:- (i) In deciding the causation of war or war service injuries, viz., whether the discharge of the missile or the impact of the bomb caused the injury or death, can account be taken of mental or non-physical factors? (2) In deciding the content of injuries themselves, what is meant by the law's requirement that they should be physical injuries? (3) In deciding the sequence of death for purposes of administering estates, what is the view of the law as to the proof of that sequence and in particular the possibility or otherwise of establishing absolute simultaneity? TERMINOLOGY In this paper the terms mental, physical, shock are used in their popular non-technical sense. The law uses them in that sense and this is a legal paper. The law makes a clear and bold distinction between mental and physical in dealing with personal injuries at Common Law, under various peace-time Acts of Parliament, and particularly in the war-time Personal Injuries (Civilians) Schemes. It uses the term shock in the sense almost of anything not involving bodily contact or lesion; references to damages for shock, death from shock, abound in the law reports and legal textbooks. Medical science, it appears, which on such topics should be authori- tative, increasingly finds mind and body one and indivisible, mere aspects of an integrated whole. It apparently makes no such artificial distinction between mental and physical; whereas shock connotes to medicine a particular well-known, observable physiological condition. * R ead by Mr. Harcourt Hitchin, on behalf of the author, at the meeting on November 22, 1945, the President, W. Norwood East, M.D., F.R.C.P., being in the Chair.

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