[Failure to assist persons in danger in surgery]

From 1949 to 1990, the authors gathered 120 files relating to 181 decisions, most of which are unpublished, and analyzed the teachings provided by case law about physicians faced with failure to assist persons in danger. This long series, extending over 30 years of application of article 63, paragraph 2, of the Penal Code--repressing failure to assist-, describes the most various conditions in which general practitioners or specialists were prosecuted, and most often charged and judged, by various criminal courts. In a number of cases, the appeals that were lodged enabled the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court to dram up Law rules taking primarily into account the strict application of the Penal Code article in cause, since its first decision in 1949. This article may involve surgeons as specialists, but also as "medical citizens" who are always regarded as having a particular mission of assistance, because of their vocation to rescue victims of accidents or patients in a pathological condition requiring assistance. The effectiveness of assistance is not considered in this legal requirement, which all representatives of the medical profession regard as a permanent sword of Damocles that must never be ignored whatever the circumstances and the practitioner's specialty.