Though not in the main stream of forensic literature, this substantial paperback is an interesting history of the means by which people have obtained compensation for injuries throughout the ages. I t has much medico-legal significance and in fact the germ of the idea which led to the book had its origins in a lecture given at the Royal College of Surgeons in London in 1959. This was later amplified by a number of authors and the present text was compiled by Dr. Achille Geerts, a medico-legist and crimiilologist from Antwerp, together with Mr. W. John Urmson, M.A., who contributed the chapters on the British aspects, Dr. Kornblith, former Principal Medical Examining Physician in the State of New York contributing the American connection.
The authors begin right at the beginning of recorded history where there is a remarkable wealth of detail about compensation for bodily injury. The laws of Hammurabi go back to 1750 BC and even earlier legal texts have been drawn upon by the authors. Probably the first schedule of compensation dates to 2050 BC, when Sumerian laws stated that bones broken with a weapon were worth one silver 'mina' to the victim. The history of this topic is traced throughout the Near East, Greece, Rome, Arabia, India, China and through the ancient Germans into the British Isles. For a Welsh reviewer, it was pleasant to see that the detailed compensation laws of Hywel Dda in the tenth century are given prominence, passing on to Saxon and Danish practice. Once they have reached the contemporary scene, the authors enlarge upon comparative systems in continental Europe, and especially the U.S.S.R. and compare them with the scene in the United States. The book is rounded off by a discussion of important medical problems in compensation medicine today, and modern scientific trends in this litigious area which provides so much work for lawyers, doctors and on occasion forensic scientists. For those involved in this field of civil law, the book is of practical value as well as interest, but even for the general reader, it is an easily-read account, with a certain fascination in that one can detect the same logic-or sometimes illogic-in the desire of people to "get their rights" in the way of monetary compensation for injury, passing as a continuous thread right back to the earliest recorded days of civilisatlon.
BERNARD KNIGHT DRUGS AND DANGER