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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    correctly on any topic with which his delusion is connected, with the single exception that he mistakes one false impression for a reality, or has one erroneous conviction. It is difficult to suppose that medical writers, who had abundant opportunities of personal observations, should have been led astray by the theoretical opinion of Mr. Locke, and yet such appears to have been the fact. Dr. Battie in his Treatise on Madness, says, Qui species alias veris capiet, commotus habebitur, and this, by all mankind as well as the physician, no one ever doubting whether the perception of objects not really existing, or not really corresponding to the senses be a certain sign of madness; therefore, deluded imagination is not only an indisputable but an essential character of madness.'' Deluded imagination according to Dr. Battie, constitutes insanity. To the same purport Dr. Willis lays down what he conceives to be the difference between an unsound and a weak mind. A sound mind is one wholly free from delusion. Weak minds, again, only differ from strong ones in the extent and power of their faculties, but unless they betray symptoms of