Volume 1

A letter to the ... Lord Chancellor, on the nature and interpretation of unsoundness of mind, and imbecility of intellect / [John Haslam].

  • Haslam, John, 1764-1844
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the ... Lord Chancellor, on the nature and interpretation of unsoundness of mind, and imbecility of intellect / [John Haslam]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    “ The question whether he was a lunatic, being a “ question, admitting in the solution of it, of a decision that imputed to him at one time an “ extremely sound mind, but at other times, an 4‘ occurrence of insanity, with reference to which, “ it was necessary to guard his person and his pro- “ perty by a commission issuing. It seems to have “ been a very long time before those who had “ the administration of justice in this department, “ thought themselves at liberty to issue a com- “ mission, when the person was represented as not “ being ideot ex nativitate, as not being lunatic, “ but as being of unsound mind, importing by “ those words, the notion, that the party was in “ some such state, as was to be contra-distinguished “ from idiotcy, and as he was to be contra-distin- “ guished from lunacy, and yet such as made him “ a proper object of a commission, in the nature <( of a commission to inquire of idiotcy, or a com- “ mission to inquire of lunacy. From the mo- “ ment that that had been established, down to this “ moment, it appears to me to have been at the “ same time established, that whatever may be the “ degree of weakness or imbecility of the party to u manage his own affairs, if the finding of the jury “ is only that he was of an extreme imbecility of