Report of the proceedings under a brieve of idiotry, Peter Duncan against David Yoolow, tried at Coupar-Angus, 28-30 Jan., 1837 : with an appendix of relative documents, and an introduction / by Ludovic Colquhoun.

  • Duncan, Peter, active 1837.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the proceedings under a brieve of idiotry, Peter Duncan against David Yoolow, tried at Coupar-Angus, 28-30 Jan., 1837 : with an appendix of relative documents, and an introduction / by Ludovic Colquhoun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a disordered brain; or, thirdly, from the wrong texture or dispo¬ sition of the organs of sensation, are naturally and irremediably in¬ capable of managing their affairs. 44 Of the first class are fatuous 44 persons, called also idiots in our law, who are entirely deprived 44 of the faculty of reason, and have an uniform stupidity and inat- 44 tendon in their manner, and childishness in their speech, which 44 distinguishes them from other men ; and this distemper of mind 44 is commonly from the birth, and incurable.5’1 Although the term idiot, in its legal sense, seems more properly applicable to such persons only as have been without understanding from their nativity, and whom therefore the law presumes never likely to attain any, it includes also those who may have been at one time in possession of sound intellect, but who, through any cause, have been subsequently deprived of it, and are reduced to a state si¬ milar in its manifestations to that of congenital idiocy. In the second class are ranked furious persons,—and they, strictly speaking, 44 cannot be said to be deprived of judgment, 44 for they are frequently known to reason with acuteness: but 44 an excess of spirits, and an overheated imagination, obstruct 44 the application of their reason to the ordinary purposes of life ; 4 4 and their infirmity is generally brought on by sickness, disap - 44 pointment, or other external accidents, and frequently inter- 44 rupted by lucid intervals. Under these may be included mad- 44 men ; though their madness should not discover itself by acts 44 of fury, but by a certain wildness of behaviour flowing from a 44 disturbed fancy.”2 The term lunatic is, in our legal lan¬ guage, used with reference to those individuals, whose cases are characterized by the alternation of lucid intervals with ebullitions of frenzy. To these two classes our law-writers add a thirds which has reference to persons whose organs of sensation are defective or imperfect. But, at the present day, persons in this predicament are not considered proper subjects for cognition, unless where the defect or imperfection is, in character and degree, such as to be obviously incompatible with the possibility of capacity. In such a case, the individual is rightly judged by the law to be in no better condition than the connate idiot; for, as the senses are the only inlets of knowledge, if these indispensable inlets be obstructed