Rogers v. Crain

Citations

• 30 Tex. 284

Syllabus

<p>The expressions of a person afflicted with bodily pains or illness relative to his health and sensations are in their nature original evidence, such expressions being ordinarily the natural consequence and outward indication of co-existing suffering. Such declarations, if made to a medical man, are of greater weight as evidence; but if made to any other persons, they are not on that account to be rejected.</p> <p>Inquiries by medical men, and the answers to them, are evidence to show the state of health of the individual, and it is admissible from the very nature of the thing. So, in an action for assault and battery, what the plaintiff has said to his surgeons of what he has suffered from the assault is competent evidence.</p> <p>When the object is to show the condition of health of a person, it is competent to prove how he looked, how he acted, and of what he complained. This is natural evidence, or the evidence of facts, as distinguished from personal evidence or the testimony of witnesses. .</p> <p>The admissibility of evidence of this character depends upon whether the pain or suffering or bodily condition complained of is contemporaneous or coexisting with the declarations.</p> <p>These rules were applicable to the statements of slaves, as to their diseases, although they could not be witnesses. They were not their statements, but a part of the res gesta.</p> <p>The opinion of a medical man is evidence, per se, upon the state of a person’s health, and the grounds .of his opinion, which may be partly the answers of the patient to his inquiries, are admissible collaterally in evidence to support and explain his opinion.</p> <p>The opinion of a medical man, that his patient died of a disease, the character of which he stated, is admissible evidence, although he had not seen the patient for two weeks before her death. It was an opinion upon a question of science and skill, by a medical witness, founded upon facts within his own knowledge.</p> <p>The burden of p