“Injuries, affecting a man’s health, are where by any unwholesome practices of another a man sustains any apparent damage in his vigor or constitution. As by selling him bad provisions or wine … or by the neglect or unskilful management of his physician, surgeon, or apothecary. For it hath been solemnly resolved … that mala praxis is a great misdemeanor and offence at common law, whether it be for curiosity and experiment, or by neglect; because it breaks the trust which the party had placed in his physician, and tends to the patient’s destruction.” 3 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 122 (1768).
mala praxis
mala praxis (mal-[schwa] prak-sis). [Law Latin] Hist. Malpractice; unskilled treatment, esp. by a doctor.
