Cathy McClive

In the present day we often take the concept of medical expertise for granted. That is to say, we depend upon a qualified body of experts whose legitimate knowledge and expert status inform judges, juries and wider society. The questioning of expert medical testimony in recent high-profile cases, such as those involving former British Home Office pathologist Dr Freddy Patel, reveals that the basis of professional expertise is much more uncertain than we might think. What makes an expert? When should her/his evidence be relied upon, when should it be questioned and by whom? How far is expertise affected by things like the status and gender of the expert and the bodily evidence?

The basis of this application is that an historical approach to medical expertise can make a valuable contribution to our understanding of the related issues in both past societies and our own. The fellowship will be used to conduct a case study of medical expertise in eighteenth-century Lyon. The study will be guided by issues as relevant in the eighteenth century as they are today. Medico-legal experts now, as in eighteenth-century France, carry the responsibilityof interpreting medical evidence within a specific legal framework and conveying their conclusions to the court in a convincing and authoritative manner. Now, as in the eighteenth century, decisions about the future of victims/defendants are often made by judges or juries on the basis of this evidence. The smooth running of this system depends on the legitimacy of the expert’s knowledge and expert status and their ability to successfully perform the role of medico-legal expert in the judicial arena, negotiating the acceptance of their expertise by judges, juries, jurists, lay witnesses and wider society. If their expert status is revealed to be fraudulent, or their expertise based on a mistaken assessment of the evidence, the consequences can involve tragic miscarriages of justice. This may not go as far as the execution of an innocent person as in ancien régime France, but could and still does lead to wrongful imprisonment.

The Lyon case study has been chosen because of the importance of the city as a provincial medical centre and because of the survival of an exceptional body of legal and medical documentary material. This case study will be the first step in a long-term project examining medical expertise in ancien régime France.