Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Maudsley, Henry, 1835-1918.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rests upon the recognition of two principles: first, that the insane have like passions with those who are not insane, and are restrained from doing wrong, and con- strained to do right, by the same motives which have the same effects in sane persons ; secondly, that these motives are only effective within limits, and that beyond these limits they become powerless, the hope of reward being of no avail, and the expectation or infliction of punish- ment actually provoking more unreason and violence. By the skilful combination of these principles in practice it has come to pass tbat asylums are now, for the most part, quiet and orderly institutions, instead of being, as in olden times, dens of disorder and violence, and that the curious sight-seer, who visits an asylum as he would visit a menagerie, sees nothing extraordinary, and comes away disappointed. And yet, although in much so like, how different is the madman essentially ! Be the change in him what it may, it is plain that he has fallen from man's high estate, that he is no longer one with his kind, that he has lost the highest human attributes—those by which man is what he is among animals. Learned men may dispute con- cerning the nature and extent of the change ; but the way- faring man, though a fool, cannot fail to perceive it. Nor does the change fail to influence him: deep in his heart there is generated an instinctive feeling of distrust, if not of actual repugnance ; he recoils in spite of himself from the distortion of humanity. Notwithstanding much bene- volence of sentiment towards those who are afflicted with insanity, and much righteous indignation against those