Studies of criminal responsibility and limited responsibility / by Charles Follen Folsom.

  • Folsom, Charles Follen, 1842-1907.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Studies of criminal responsibility and limited responsibility / by Charles Follen Folsom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/172 (page 10)
    the position that a variety of organs are necessary for a variety of manifestations. Given these various organs, of course any one of them may be diseased, while the others remain sound. It is tolerably cer¬ tain that different ganglionic cells in the spinal cord have different functions; and many clinical observa¬ tions, especially the symptom aphasia, make the same fact more than probable with regard to the brain. At all events, the authority of Pinel, Marc, Ray, Mauds- ley, Tuke, Bucknill, Morel, Esquirol, and many others is conclusive on this point. I saw not long ago a man with this disease. He had killed his superior officer. In prison (he was too powerful to be in an asylum), he had stabbed one fellow-prisoner, had bitten off the lip of another, and had tried to kill his physician by throwing a heavy stool at his head, and at all these times the odds were entirely against him, as there were plenty of officers about. I think that this form of disease must be excluded in Pomeroy’s case for the following rea¬ sons : — (1) There was too much premeditation in the acts committed by him. (2) The boy could exercise self-control while under observation. (3) There was a motive in his acts, in his love of