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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    philosophical views. In his Examen medical des proces criminels des nommes Leger, Feldt- man, Lecouffe, (1825), and his Discussion medico- Ugale sur la Folie, (1826), as well as a sequel to the last, entitled, Nouvelle discussion medico- leg ale sur la Folie, (1828), he has collected accounts of numerous criminal trials, in which insanity was pleaded in defence of the accused, and has taken the occasion to discuss the many important questions to which they give rise. In the course of these discussions there is scarcely a dark or disputed point in the whole range of the subject, which he has not examined with great ability; and if he has not always settled them satisfactorily to the unprejudiced inquirer, he has at least afforded him the means of form- ing more clear and definite views. On becoming aware of the deficiency, in our medical literature, of works on insanity consi- dered exclusively in its legal relations, it was the author's first thought to make a translation, either of Hoffbauer's or Georget's work, but considering that the numerous notes which would be required in order to bring it up to the present state of the science, and adapt it to our own laws, would prove inconvenient and embarrassing to the reader, besides not fully accomplishing the object, he was induced to abandon this pro- ject, and, as the only means of fairly developing the subject, to prepare an original work,—ori- ginal strictly in plan and in many of its general views only, for the materials have been necessa- rily drawn, in a great degree, from other sources than the author's own experience. The main object which he proposed to himself, was to esta-