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‘Witnessing of the Hands’ and Eyes: Surgeons as Medico‐Legal Experts in the Claudine Rouge Affair, L yon, 1767
Author(s) -
MCCLIVE CATHY
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2012.00535.x
Subject(s) - economic justice , miscarriage , ancien regime , law , reading (process) , history , literature , political science , criminology , philosophy , psychology , art , pregnancy , biology , politics , genetics
In the celebrated case of C laudine R ouge, the very ordinary medico‐legal role of surgeons as witnesses of the senses took on extraordinary proportions as C laude C hampeaux and J ean F aissole were tried in the public and medical arenas for their role in the polemic that surrounded their reading of the signs of drowning in R ouge's putrefied corpse. Beneath concern for a potential miscarriage of justice and the condemnation of innocent men and women, C hampeaux and F aissole were used as scapegoats for a trial of the epistemology of witnessing based on the evidence of the senses and the role of legal medicine itself within the ancien régime judiciary.