Medicine,Science and the Law

This essay describes an area of clinical interest explored by a consultant psychiatrist who was appointed for one purpose and developed another. It describes a new community forensic psychiatric service for an area which was Welsh speaking and had no penal units. As a result of the discharge of 500 in-patients from 8 psychiatric hospitals in 1961–63 a ‘spare' hospital became available as the centre piece of a service which is now described.

A fatal case of doxepin (Sinequan) poisoning is reported. The significant post-mortem findings, the analytical procedure, and results are presented and discussed with respect to available published data.