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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    points; but when the judges of other countries con- demn them with equal earnestness, it is impossible for the most confident to help feeling some hesitation. In the case of State v. Jones, tried in the court of New Hampshire, America, Judge Ladd, after passing in review the answers of the English judges, thus speaks of the doctrine embodied in them :— The doctrine thus promulgated as law has found its way into the text books, and has doubtless been largely received as the enunciation of a sound legal principle since that day. Yet it is probable that no ingenuous student of the law ever read it for the first time without being shocked by its exquisite inhumanity. It practically holds a man confessed to be insane, accountable for the exercise of the same reason, judgment, and controlling mental power that is required in perfect mental health. It is, in effect, saying to the j ury, the prisoner was mad when he committed the act, but he did not use sufiicieut reason in his madness. He killed a man because, under an insane delusion, he falsely believed the man had done him a great wrong, which was giving rein to a motive of revenge, and the act is murder. If he had killed a man only because, under an insane delusion, he falsely believed the man would kill him if he did not do so, that would have been giving the rein to an instinct of self-preservation, and would not be crime. It is true in words the judges attempt to guard against a conse- quence so shocking as that a man may be punished for an act which is purely the offspring and product of insanity, by intro- ducing the qualifying phrase, and is not in other respects insane.'' That is, if insanity produces the false belief, which is the prime cause of the act, but goes no further, then the accused is to be judged according to the character of motives which are presumed to spring up out of that part of the mind which has H 2