The forensic psychiatrist: consultant versus activist in legal doctrine.

In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it was easy to know the public perception of every rank and occupation of society. The Dance of Death was a popular art form that showed in a series of cartoons each person, from king to peasant, from merchant to beggar, from judge to robber in the final rendezvous with Death, with his or her frailties, dishonesty, and hypocrisies mercilessly exposed. The most famous series is that of Holbein published in 1538.' Holbein portrays the physician as impotent and helpless to cure the effects of age. "He holds out his hand to receive, for inspection, a urinal which Death presents to him, and which contains the water of a decrepit old man whom he introduces, and seems to say to the physician, 'Canst thou cure this man who is already in my p~wer? '"~ The lawyer is portrayed thus: "The rich client is putting a fee into the hands