On the different forms of insanity : in relation to jurisprudence, designed for the use of persons concerned in legal questions regarding unsoundness of mind.

  • Prichard, James Cowles, 1786-1848.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the different forms of insanity : in relation to jurisprudence, designed for the use of persons concerned in legal questions regarding unsoundness of mind. 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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    hardly be proved in the strict sense of the terms of any, and probably most idiots become such owing to diseases of the brain, which affect them during infancy. But it would be of no consequence in regard to any practical result, whether idiotism were really congenital or induced by infantile diseases, which pre- vent the natural developement of the brain. The distinction, however, whether idiotism dis- played itself from early infancy or in after life, namely, in adult age, has been regarded as impor- tant. In a writ, de idiota inquirendo et exami- nando, it has been specified that the sheriff shall kC enquire whether I. of B. the brother and heir of T. of B. was a perfect idiot from the time of his nativity, by which the custody of his lands and tenements ought to belong to the king, or fell by misfortune, or in other manner, into such infirmitie afterwards, for which such cus- tody ought not to belong to the king/'* In this last case, that is with respect to a person who has lost the possession of his mental faculties through disease in after life, which Lord Hale calls, Dementia accidentalis vel adventitia, though the party in everything else be entitled to the same protection as an idiot, and though * Bacon's Abridgement, p. 267.