Medico-Legal Notes

application of strong pressure. Partial expansion of the lungs with air is generally assumed to indicate that respiration was interfered with by some cause during or immediately after birth, or that the child only possessed a very feeble vitality during the time that it lived. It may be generally affirmed that the less the amount of lung tissue giving evidence of buoyancy in water, the less is the probability of the child having survived its birth for any length of time. Where a newly-born child is found dead, and the mother is suspected of infanticide, this is a fair conclusion to draw, in the absence of clear proof to the contrary, but it would be a great mistake to regard such a conclusion as absolutely correct in all cases. It is well known that not only may very partial expansion and buoyancy of the lungs be consistent with the survival of a child for a considerable period of time, but also that the hydrostatic test may afford wholly negative results, and the lungs retain a perfectly foetal appearance, in cases where respiration has continued for several hours. The hydrostatic test, therefore, is not an absolute means of