One of the many distinctive features of nineteenth-century Scottish medical education was the unique system of teaching forensic medicine and public health together under the heading of medical jurisprudence and medical police. Within the British Isles, Scotland was alone not only in teaching these subjects in tandem, but in doing so throughout the nineteenth century, and at some institutions well into the twentieth century. To the present-day observer, there would seem to be little in common between forensic medicine and public health, but throughout the nineteenth century these two subjects were intimately connected both at the level of academic teaching and in everyday practice. The link between them was their common concern with meeting certain requirements of the law. They did not train doctors to become more proficient in the healing arts, but equipped them to provide the courts and local magistrates with informed advice on the material facts of crime and squalor and the best means of dealing with them. This chapter focuses on two main aspects of this system. The first is the European origins of medical jurisprudence, sometimes referred to as state medicine or medical police, and the reasons why it was more attractive to Scotland than to England. It examines the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the first British chair of medical jurisprudence at Edinburgh in 1807, and the perceived radical implications of the subject. Secondly, the paper traces the progress of Scottish medical jurisprudence teaching, explaining why a formal system of medico-legal education was deemed necessary, who taught it and what its effects were.