A treatise on the medical jurisprudence of insanity / by I. Ray, M.D.

  • Ray, Isaac, 1807-1881.
Date:
1838
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the medical jurisprudence of insanity / by I. Ray, 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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    the suggestions contained in the chapter on the Duties of medical men when consulted concerning the state of a patient's mind. In the Judgments of Sir John Nicholl, (contained in Haggard, Phillhnore and Addams's Reports) in the Ecclesiastical Courts, which, in their jurisdiction of wills, have frequent occasion to inquire into the effect of mental diseases on the powers of the mind, are also to be found, not only some masterly analyses of heterogeneous and conflicting evidence, but an acquaintance with the phenomena of insanity in its various forms, that would be creditable to the practical physician, and an application of it to the case under consideration, that satisfies the most cautious with the correctness of the decision. In Germany this branch of legal medicine has received a little more attention, and in a work entitled, Die Psycologie in ihren Hauplanwendungen auf die Rechtspjlege, {Psy- chology in its chief Applications to the Administration of Justice) by J. C. Hoffbauer, a Doctor of Laws and Pro- fessor in the University of Halle, and published in 1S09, we had, till quite recently, the only complete and method- ical treatise on insanity in connexion with its legal relations. It bears the impress of a philosophical mind, accustomed to observe the mental operations when under the influence of disease; it contains a happy analysis of some states of mental impairment, and its doctrines are generally correct, and in many instances in advance of his own, and even our time. Hoffbauer, however, not being a practical phy- sician, was less disposed to consider insanity in its patho- logical, than in its psychological relations, and consequently has attached too little importance to its connexion with physical causes, and to the classification and description of its different forms by means of which they may be re- cognised and distinguished from one another. It is also too deeply imbued with the peculiar metaphysical subtleties