Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley, M.D.

  • Maudsley, Henry, 1835-1918.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley, M.D. 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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    ralization of them into natural types, will follow, so that when a particular case presents itself in practice it will be possible, by referring it to its natural order, to bring definite information to bear upon it, instead of, as under the present system of denoting by a vague name a variety of diseases, some of which have nothing more in common than the particular symptom from which the name has been derived, gaining little or no definite know- ledge of it. It is evident that the farther medicine advances on this path of inductive inquiry, the less it will be exposed to the criticism of lawyers and others who have no practical knowledge of the disease. It will be impossible to declare, as an English Lord Chancellor ignorantly de- clared not long ago, that insanity is properly a subject of moral inquiry, and to condemn, as he ventured foolishly to do, the evil habit which had grown up of assuming that it was a physical disease; it will become more and more evident that the decision of its nature must be guided by the knowledge of those who have made it their study; and every one will see the absurdity of the pretension of lawyers to make a medical diagnosis of insanity without medical aid, as every one would now see the absurdity of their pretension to make a diagnosis of fever or of small- pox. Not that the cases are exactly similar: for while medical men are making a diagnosis of insanity in a doubtful case where it is alleged in explanation of crime, it must be remembered that the law is also concerned to make a diagnosis—the diagnosis of crime; and the symptoms from which both lawyers and medical men