A monograph on mental unsoundness / By Francis Wharton.

  • Wharton, Francis, 1820-1889.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A monograph on mental unsoundness / By Francis Wharton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    occur. He might not be deluded as to the actual existence of injuries he had received, but he might grievously and grossly exaggerate them, and they might so operate upon a weakly framed mind and intellect as to produce crime. He could conceive that the Maker of that man, in his infinite mercy, having regard to the object of his creation, might deem him not an object for punishment. But that man was accountable to human tribunals in a totally different sense. Man punished crime for the purpose of practically deterring others from offending, by committing a repetition of the like act. It was in that sense only that he had any thing to do with the doctrine of accountable and not accountable. He could conceive a person whom the Deity might not deem accountable, but who might be perfectly accountable to human laws.(w) § 57. Chief Justice Hornblower, it is true, in a charge, which bears the impress of his single authority, not having been reviewed by the Court, in banc, took still more decided ground, involving an emphatic disclaimer of moral insanity in toto. At the same time he rejects in a manner quite unexampled for its summariness, all the old tests, and reduces the inquiry to a point which, after all, leaves the widest margin. In my judgment, the true question to be put to the jury is, whether the prisoner was insane at the time of committing the act; and in answer to that question there is little danger of a jury's giving a negative answer, and convicting a prisoner who is proved to be insane on the subject matter relating to or connected with the criminal act, or proved to be so far and so (joirrall// deranged as to render it difficult, or almost impossible, to discriminate between his sane and insane acts.(v) Had the most libera] doctrine of the test writers been given instead of this, the jury could hardly have been allowed greater latitude. The great weight of American judicial authority, therefore, inclines to the recognition of homicidal insanity as a distinct basis of defence. And, in fact, this concession is but a legitimate consequence of the posi- tion already generally noticed, and to be presently more specifically considered, that the testimony of medical men is, on medical questions, to bo received by Court and jury as authoritative. § 58. When such a view is taken there can be no doubt of the result. Those to whom the guardianship and study of the insane is committed, unite in saying that moral insanity is a distinct, well known malady, which arbitrarily impels its victim to involuntary crimes which he de- tests but cannot avoid. Judge Story, with his usual tenderness, refused to allow the conviction of a young woman who in a fit of puerperal mania threw her infant overboard, though she was perfectly conscious of the enormity of the act \(w) and what this humane and very able judge did, in the teetli of the old dogmas, from the necessity of the case, the modern psychologists teach to be in accordance with experience and right reason. The English and American writers, it may not be out of place here to notice, are distinct to this effect.(x) § 59. Nor is the testimony of the Continental Psychologists less em- («) Hang. Par. Deb. LXVII. 728. (•) State v. Spencer, 1 Zabriskie, 196. («•) V. S. r. Hewson, 7 Host. Law Rep. 361. (r) Winslow on Plea of Insan. 35, 64; Ray's Med. Jur. 188, 192, 218; Guy's Med. Jur. 32H ; Rush on the Mind, 261; Wigan on Insanity, 81; 1 Beck's Med. Jur. 10th Ed. 774-5 \post I 171—221.