BURWELL REPORTS INCREASE OF WORK IN LEGAL MEDICINE

Expansion of its work in legal medicine, or the application of medicine to the administration of law, has been undertaken by the Medical School, Dean C. Sidney Burwell announced yesterday in his annual report.

Asserting that "the filed of legal medicine has not hitherto been adequately developed in America," Burwell stated that the expanded department will make consultation service available to public law enforcement agencies, will conduct research in medico-legal problems, and will teach graduate and undergraduate medical students.

In charge of the department is professor Alan B. Moritz, appointed to the staff in 1937, who has spent the past two years abroad studying the organization and practice of legal medicine in European Countries, and serving in the department of Forensic Medicine, University of Edinburgh.

Moritz is first holder of the Professorship of Legal Medicine established in 1936 in honor of the late George Burgess Magrath '94, professor of Legal Medicine for many years, and pioneer in this field of investigation.

New Labs Set Up

New laboratories are being set up for the department on the third floor of Building E-1, of the Medical School, where there is already located the George Burgess Magrath Memorial Library of legal medicine.

The Harvard Law School and other departments of the Medical School are cooperating in the expansion, Burwell said. Faculty members of the Medical and Law Schools will offer a course of lectures and demonstrations for undergraduate medical students, giving a general survey of the filed of legal medicine and the essentials of medical jurisprudence. In addition, members of the Department of Legal Medicine will participate in the teaching of pharmacology, industrial hygiene, and criminal law.

It is also planned to train a small number of men who desire to make a specialty of the field of legal medicine. One of the education foundations has established two three-year fellowships to promote this specialized work.