The medical jurisprudence of insanity / J.M. Pagan.

  • Pagan, J. M. (John MacMichan), 1802-1868.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical jurisprudence of insanity / J.M. Pagan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    277/340 (page 267)
    tient was entirely rational. She recognised in the face of her medical attendant, the son of her old master, whom she had known so many years before, and she related many circumstances respecting his family, and others which had happened to herself in her earlier days. But, alas ! it was only the gleam of reason; as the fever abated, clouds again enveloped the mind. She sunk into her former deplorable state, and remained in it till her death, -which happened a few years afterwards.* Such cases are exceedingly rare, and even if they were of frequent occurrence, they could not create much diffi- culty, as circumstances may have occurred in the interval of which they must be entirely ignorant, and which would influence them, if they were known, in the disposal of their property. Each case must be judged of on its own merits, and an opinion formed by the measure which we have taken of the integrity of the intellectual faculties, all of which it is our duty to put in operation. The opinion of the medical jurist may be required as to the validity of a will executed in the last stages of life, when no previous intellectual deficiency had existed, but in which the intellect may be presumed to have been obscured by the physical disease Avhich has led to a fatal termination. I have already observed that in many cases of intellectual disorder, and in some rai'e cases of mental deficiency, there has been a lightening before death. The powers of the mind have been in a great measure restored shortly before the fatal event; but it far more fre- quently happens that the disease of which the individual dies, induces a complete state of unconsciousness, or, at all events, such an obscuring of the mental faculties, as that no act which he might perform could be considered valid, * Tuke's Description of the Botreat near York.