Feigned insanity, how most usually simulated, and how best detected : an essay to which was awarded the gold medal in the class of medical jurisprudence in the University of Edinburgh, July, 1844 / by Henry Wentworth Acland.

  • Acland, Henry W. (Henry Wentworth), 1815-1900.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Feigned insanity, how most usually simulated, and how best detected : an essay to which was awarded the gold medal in the class of medical jurisprudence in the University of Edinburgh, July, 1844 / by Henry Wentworth Acland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    medical jurist requires but a touchstone to test that idea by; having a good knowledge of in- sanity as a disease, he ascertains what points in it, or beside it, the feigner mocks; and fur- nishes himself with tests for those parts which are the most likely to contain alloy. There exist in many imaginative writers pro- fessed portraitures of insane persons. Had time and space allowed it, we had intended to have collected the descriptions of our modem authors for criticism. The greatest of Shake- speare’s plays teems with his observation on this scene of man’s career. Lear, however, written after Hamlet, is the more perfect study. The latter has left a yet and ever-to-be unset- tled strife among commentators, who cannot decide as to his madness or madness “ in craft. That no one can determine this, appears excel- lent evidence of the care with which the picture was drawn. No one doubts Lear s insanity; or, do they doubt, let them read an article in the “ Quarterly Review”* upon the subject, the night they desire to lie sleepless. But the medical juiist will never meet with feigned insanity under such finished forms. We have already noticed the * Vol. xlix. a.d. 1833.