Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Maudsley, Henry, 1835-1918.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    and quality of it, and that in doing it he was doing wrong, he must be held responsible, notwitbstand- ing that on some subjects he may have been insane; that in order to exempt a person from punishment insanity must be so great in extent or degree as to destroy his capacity of distinguishing between right and wrong in regard to the particular act. But in other instances the instructions of the judges have been different. In the case of State v. Wier, Graf- ton 60, 1864, Chief Justice Bell charged the jury thus:— The evidence must satisfy the jury that the party at the time of committing the act in question was in- sane, and that the disease is of such severity that the person is incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong in that particular case, or of controlling the sudden impulse of his own disordered mind; or, as the same rule has been laid down by an eminent judge, a person, in order to be punishable by law, must have sufficient memory, intelligence, reason, and will, to enable him to distinguish between right and wrong in regard to the particular act about to be done, to know and understand that it will be wrong, and that he will deserve punishment by committing it; to which I add sufficient mental potver to control the sud- den impulses of his oion disordered mind. ... I have been accustomed to regard as the distinguishing test of insanity the inability to control the actions of a man's mind. . . . The power of the control of the thoughts being lost, the power of the will over the conduct may be equally lost, and the party under the influence of disease acts not as a rational being, but