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B - Slight Bodily Harm
which, if death occurs, it will not hold him especially liable for it. In principle, of course, the interval which may elapse between the commission of the criminal act whereby the injury is inflicted and the death of the sufferer in consequence of that injury, might have no effect in our estimate of the offender's guilt (Jameson). But, for practical reasons and, having regard, we repeat, to the fact that the fatal result was not intended, it is fair not to impose any aggravation of the punishment prescribed for the grievous harm caused, when death results after a reasonably long time.
The punishment varies, as already pointed out, according as to whether the death ensues solely as a result of the nature of natural consequences of the harm or also as a result of the supervening accidental causes. For the meaning of the latter expression, we may refer to what we have already said.
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In English law, an act may amount to an unlawful killing either as murder or as manslaughter, even though it be so remote in the chain of causes that it would not have produced death hut for the consequent acts or omissions of third parties, unless the subsequent acts or omissions of the third parties were either wilful or, at least, unreasonably negligent. The rule extends even to similar intervening conduct on the part of the deceased victim himself: e.g., his refusal to submit to amputation414 .
B - Slight Bodily Harm
Any bodily harm which does not produce any of the effects mentioned in sections 230, 232 and 234 is deemed to be slight (Section 235 (l)). In effect, a bodily harm which is not grievous is slight. But, of course, the definition which section 228 gives of bodily harms generally, applies also to slight bodily harms. In other words, a slight bodily harm:
(a) consists in a harm to the body or health or in a mental derangement which is not grievous within the meaning of the said Sections 230, 232 and 234
and which:
(b) is caused by a person acting without any intention to kill or to put the life of any person in manifest jeopardy but with the intention of causing a personal hurt.
414 Vide Kenny, op. cit., pp. 148 - 149
