Opinion No. Oag 30-75, (1975)

DANIEL L. LAROCQUE, District Attorney Marathon County

I

You ask whether a physician, who is informed by a patient, for purposes of diagnosis or treatment, of matters relating to a homicide, may disclose such confidential communication to appropriate authorities, without consent of the patient, prior to commencement of criminal proceedings.

Generally, the public is entitled to, and may compel disclosure of, every man's evidence. VIII Wigmore on Evidence (McNaughton Rev. 1961), secs. 2285, 2290, pp. 527, 543; 97 C.J.S., Witnesses, sec. 252, p. 740.

Contemporaneous with recognition, in the sixteenth…