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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    The following are the sentiments of Lord Erskine on this subject:— In all the cases which have filled West- minster Hall with the most complicated con- siderations, the lunatics and other insane persons, who have been the subjects of them, have not only had memory, have not only had the most perfect knowledge and recollection of all the relations in which they stood towards others, and of the acts and circumstances of their lives, but have, in general, been remark- able for subtlety and acuteness. Defects in their reasonings have seldom been traceable, the disease consisting in the delusive sources of thought; all their deductions within the scope of the malady being founded upon the immove- able assumption of matters as realities, either without any foundation whatsoever, or so dis- torted and disfigured by fancy, as to be almost the same thing as their creation. c Delusion, therefore, where there is no frenzy or raving madness, is the true character of insanity.' In civil cases, as I have already said, the law voids every act of the lunatic during the period of lunacy, although the delu- sion may be extremely circumscribed, al- though the mind may be quite sound in all