A manual of medical jurisprudence / by Alfred Swaine Taylor.

  • Taylor, Alfred Swaine, 1806-1880.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence / by Alfred Swaine Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in maturity. Thus we speak of the imbecility of age : this is truly nothing more than a state of senile dementia, and to apply to it the term ' imbecility' tends to create confusion. Such then are the four forms under which insanity or mental aberration may present itself to our notice, and although there are occasionally mixed states, as of mania and dementia (incoherenoj), yet it is an important feature in the distinction of mental disorders, to observe that in real insanity the characters presented to us in any given case, do not vary materially from those which have been described as peculiar to each of these states. This medical classifi- cation, it must be remembered, is made for the sake of convenience, because by it a practitioner may be led to form a safe diagnosis of the real state of mind of a person. It is not recognized in any of the law-proceedings connected with the insane : for in these the term unsoundness of mind—comprehending lunacy, idiocy, imbe- cility, and all forms of mental weakness—is almost exclusively employed. In adopting this arrangement, a medical jurist must take care not to fall into an error which has been sometimes com- mitted—i.e. of pronouncing a person to be of sound mind, because his case could not be easily placed in any one of these four great divisions of insanity. This would be as serious an error as that formerly committed by some law authorities—namely, of giving restricted and incorrect definitions of lunacy, idiocy, and imbecility, and then contending whoever was not a lunatic, idiot, or imbecile according to these arbitrary legal definitions, must be a person of sound mind. Hereditary transmission.—The hereditary transmission of insanity has sometimes presented itself as a medico-legal question in relation to the criminal responsibility of the insane. According to Chitty it is an established rule of law, ' that proof that other members of the same family have decidedly been insane is not admissible either in civil or criminal cases.' (' Med. Jur.' vol. 1, p. 352.) But recent decisions have shown that this statement is not correct. In Beg. v. Boss Touchet (1844), in which the accused was tried for shooting a man, and acquitted on the ground of insanity, Maule, J. held that evidence that the grandfather had been insane might be adduced, after it had been proved by medical testimony that such a disease is often hereditary in a family. It was also admitted in Oxford's case,—the prisoner having been tried for shooting at the Queen (' Law Times,' Oct. 20, 1844), and since that date it has been admitted in a number of cases in which insanity was urged as a defence on a charge of murder. This kind of evidence has, however, been frequently rejected, and it is not admitted by the law of Scotland. {Gibson's case, Edinburgh, December 1844.) Feigned insanity.—Insanity is sometimes feigned by persons accused of criminal offences in order to procure an acquittal or discharge. In the first place, when feigning is suspected, it will