Medical jurisprudence, as it relates to insanity : according to the law of England / By John Haslam.

  • Haslam, John, 1764-1844.
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical jurisprudence, as it relates to insanity : according to the law of England / By John Haslam. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    103/122 (page 89)
    he was neither an ideot nor a lunatic, but of unsound mind ?—And what attention would the judge and jury give to a physician in a criminal court who came to prove that a man who had committed murder was not responsible for the crime, because he was neither an ideot nor a lunatic, but of unsound mind ; importing by these words that he was in some such state as was to be contradis- tinguished from idiotcy, and as he was to be contradistinguished from lunacy? After having taken this view of the subject, which is the result* of extensive experience in this department of the profession, and of diligent enquiry into the nature of the human mind; it appears to me, that the medical practitioner may safely and conscientiously infer unsound- ness of mind, if such term he legally insisted on, whenever a morbid cQ&dition of intellect prevails, to an extent which deprives the mind of its natural and healthy offices, by produc- N