Note 216 — CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN PHYSICIAN AND PATIENT.

The revisers of the New York Statutes in 1828 in their report (5 N. Y. Stats. at Large, edited by John W. Edmonds, 2d ed., p. 726) stated as their reason for suggesting a statutory privilege for communications between physician and patient, that “in 4 Term Rep., 580, Buller, J. (to whom no one will attribute a disposition to relax the rules of evidence), said it was ‘much to be lamented’ that the information specified in this section (2 R. S., p. 406, s. 73) was not privileged. Mr. Phillips expressed the same sentiments in his treatise on Evidence, p. 104. The ground on which communications to counsel are privileged is the supposed necessity of a full knowledge of the facts, to advise correctly, and to prepare for the proper defence or prosecution of a suit. But surely the necessity of consulting a medical adviser, when life itself may be in jeopardy, is still stronger. And unless such consultations are privileged, men will be incidentally punished by being obliged to suffer the consequences of injuries without relief from the medical art, and without conviction of any offence. Besides, in such cases, during the struggle between legal duty on the one hand and professional honor on the other, the latter, aided by a strong sense of the injustice and inhumanity of the rule, will in most cases furnish a temptation to the perversion or concealment of truth, too strong for human resistance. In every view that may be taken of the policy, justice or humanity of the rule as it exists, its relaxation seems highly expedient.”