The following exchange has been reported on multiple web sites and has been attributed to the Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers Journal or one of two books1 entitled Disorder In The Courts.2 In every instance, the quote is characterized as having actually taken place during a trial.
For example, the Things People Said web site, which is where I ran across this tidbit, declares, “The following quotations are taken from official court records across the nation, showing how funny and embarrassing it is that recorders operate at all times in courts of law, so that even the slightest inadvertence is preserved for posterity.”
I have not, however, been able to track down the primary source citation, so I cannot ascertain if the dialog is legit or apocryphal, but it certainly resonates with lots of folks and, if there is any justice in the cosmos, it is genuine.
Lawyer: “Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?”
Witness: “No.”
Lawyer: “Did you check for blood pressure?”
Witness: “No.”
Lawyer: “Did you check for breathing?”
Witness: “No.”
Lawyer: “So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?”
Witness: “No.”
Lawyer: “How can you be so sure, Doctor?”
Witness: “Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.”
Lawyer: “But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?”
Witness: “Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.”
Footnotes
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1 response so far ↓
1 Helen // Jul 16, 2006 at 10:23 pm
As a doctor you might like the story of Professor Sir Roy Douglas “Pansy” Wright (1907-1990)
1.On one occasion Wright entered a physiology lecture with two samples of urine. He was seen to put a finger in one test tube and then into his mouth pronouncing, “Um, slightly bitter, urea and uric acid” and then the other “sweeter, diabetes mellitus”. The horrified students were then required to do the same. When they resumed their seats, spluttering and grimacing, Wright intoned, “Medicine is above all the art of accurate observation. None of you observed that I placed my middle finger in the urine and my ring finger in my mouth”.
2. The story is told of him beginning a lecture with hand in his pocket and the other holding of a specimen jar containing an organ. “I have in my hand a diseased penis”. He quickly received the desired retort from a student, “Which hand?”
Story from here.