This Article  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

By Ralph Slovenko, LLB, MA, PhD, with Gene L. Usdin, MD. Price, $8. Pp 202. Charles C Thomas, Publishers, 301-327 E Lawrence Ave, Springfield, Ill, 1966.

Marcus A. Jacobson, MD, Reviewer

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1967;16(2):255.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Privileged communication refers to the right to bar a witness from testifying. In the medical context, it would afford a patient the right to bar his physician from using as testimony before a court information obtained in the course of the patient-doctor relationship. Such a privilege is far from universal, and even within the United States only two thirds of the states have conferred it by statute since its origin in New York in 1828. The privilege is granted to promote medically desirable ends, but not to aid in the commission of a crime. Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, was convicted and given a life sentence for failing to report Booth to the authorities. In practice, the interpretation and application of privileged communication statutes by courts is considerably more complicated, and requires the careful balancing of desirable, but mutually exclusive, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?