A treatise on medical jurisprudence and insanity : containing chapters on imbecility, nervousness, mental deficiency, drunkenness, delirium, and mental diseases in general / By Issac Ray ... with an introductory essay by D. Spillan.

  • Ray, Isaac, 1807-1881.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on medical jurisprudence and insanity : containing chapters on imbecility, nervousness, mental deficiency, drunkenness, delirium, and mental diseases in general / By Issac Ray ... with an introductory essay by D. Spillan. 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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    tion; but the space allotted to it is altogether too limited to admit of those details, which can alone be of any really useful service; and it is one of those branches on which the author is usually the least qualified by his own experience, to throw any additional light. Insanity itself is an affection so obscure and perplexing, and the occasions have now become so frequent and im- portant when its legal relations should be pro- perly understood, that an ampler field of illus- tration and discussion is required for this pur- pose, than is afforded by a solitary chapter in works of this description. Notwithstanding the great prevalence of in- sanity in Great Britain, and the vast amount of property affected by legal regulations and deci- sions respecting it, yet the English language does not furnish a single work, in which the various forms and degrees of mental derange- ment are treated in reference to their effect on the rights and duties of man. Dr. Haslam's tract on Medical Jurisprudence as it Relates to Insanity, (1807), which was republished in America in 1819 by Dr. Cooper, in a volume of tracts by various English writers on different subjects of medicaljurisprndence, though abound- ing in valuable reflections, is altogether too brief and general, to be of much practical service as a book of reference. Among a few other works more or less directly concerned with this subject, or in which some points of it are particularly touched upon, the Inquiry Concerning the Indi- cations of Insanity, (1830), by Dr. Conolly, late Professor in the London University, is worthy of especial notice in this connexion, for the re- THT