Medical Knowledge and the Early Modern English Coroner's Inquest.

This article explores the role that medical knowledge played in early modern coroners' inquests. It examines a wider range of sources than traditional historians typically employ and reveals that evidence from autopsies was introduced at inquests at a much earlier date than previously supposed. It also shows that coroners' juries regularly considered medical evidence when rendering their verdicts and that they investigated suicides and accidental deaths as diligently as homicides. The article also explores the nature and sources of medical evidence available to coroners' juries in early modern England. Medical knowledge was not the exclusive domain of physicians or surgeons; close proximity to death and its appearance gave non-professionals a wide acquaintance with the signs of death from a variety of causes. Coroners' juries relied not only on the testimony of expert witnesses but also upon their own knowledge of medicine, which was often extensive and reliable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]