Insanity and the care of the insane / by Clark Bell.

  • Bell, Clark, 1832-1918.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity and the care of the insane / by Clark Bell. 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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    A morbid action in one, in several, or in the whole of the cerebral organs; and, as its necessary consequence, functional derangement in one, in several or in the whole of the mental faculties, which these organs subserve Dr, Coli,en. 1. Madness is an impairment of the judging faculties. 2. A lesion of the intellectual faculties without pyrexia and without coma. Copeland. Insanity is a deviation or perversion of the natural and healthy state of the mind, as manifested either by the moral emotions and conduct, or by a partial or general disorder of the intellectual powers and understanding. LoitD Coke. A lunatic lunaticus, is one who has sometimes his under- standing and sometimes not. Qui gaudet lueidis intenxUlis, and therefore he is called non compos mentis, so long as he has not understanding. Lord Chief Justick Cockburn. (p. 361, Med Leg. Journal, Dec, 1884 ; Vol. 2, No. 3): As the law, a-> expounded by the Judges in t^ie House of Lords, now stands, it is only when mental disease produces incapacity to distinguish between right and wrong, that immunity from the penal consequences of crime is admitted. The present bill introduces a new element, the a'iseuce of the power of self-control. I concur most cordially in the proposed alteration of the law. having been always stromrly of opinion that, as the pathology of insanity abun- dantly establishes, there are forms of mental disease in which, though the patient is quite aware he is about to do wrong, the will becomes overpow- ered by the force of irresistible impulse ; the power of self-control when de troyed or suspended by mental disease becomes, I think, an essential elem nt of responsibility. Sir James Stephen proposes that a jury should be allowed to return three verdicts—(1) Guilty ; (2) Guilty, but the power of his self-control was diminished by insanity ; (3) Not Guilty, on the ground of insanity. Manuel de Biran The insane cannot be classed among the moral or the intelligent; he has neither reason nor conscience, because he has not the power of will. He neither judges nor thinks; he is neither a man, nor an animal; he is simply a living machine, to whom we cannot attribute. Je ne suis plus nieme en droit, d'Attribuer une ame comme la mienne. Esquirol. La folie est une affection Cerebrale ordinairement chroni- que, sans fievre, et caracterisee par des disordres de la sensibilite, de 1'In- telligence et de la volonte. Lord Ehskine. 1800, in Hadfieldcase. Delusion, when there is no frenzy or raving madness, is the true character of such insanity as implies irresponsibility.