Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[1014] questions. In one very important case I spent a week in the repair shop of a railroad and a part of the time with my coat off, with a hammer in my hands, ascertaining the capabilities of iron to resist pressure, and studying the probable result of the breakage of an axle under the tender of an engine. On these points my case turned; and I may say that my instruction so acquired saved the case.

In fine, a lawyer who sits in his office and prepares his cases only by the statements of those who are brought to him will be very likely to be beaten.

When I was quite a young man I was called upon to defend a man for homicide. He and his associate had been engaged in a quarrel which proceeded to blows and at last to stones. My client with a sharp stone struck the deceased in the head on that part usually called the temple. The man went and sat down on a curbstone, the blood streaming from his face, and shortly afterwards fell over dead.

The theory of the government was that he died from the wound in the temporal artery. My theory was that the man died of apoplexy, and that if he had bled more from the temporal artery he might have been saved,--a wide enough difference in the theories of the cause of death.

Of course to be enabled to carry out my proposition I must know all about the temporal artery, its location, its functions, its capabilities to allow the blood to pass through it, and in how short a time a man could bleed to death through the temporal artery; also, how far excitement in a body stirred almost to frenzy in an embittered conflict and largely under the influence of liquor on a hot day, would tend to produce apoplexy. I was relieved on these two points in my case because the government did not come prepared to deal with that subject, but relied wholly upon the testimony of a surgeon that the man bled to death from the cut on the temporal artery from a stone in the hand of my client. That surgeon was one of those who we sometimes see on the stand who think that what they don't know on the subject of their profession is not worth knowing. He testified positively and distinctly that there was and could be no other cause for death except the bleeding from the temporal artery, and he described the action of the bleeding and the amount of blood discharged.

Upon all these questions I had thoroughly prepared myself. On cross-examination, I said: “Doctor, you have talked a great deal ”