The defects of the lunacy law; a vindication of the decision of the Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, in the case of Nottidge versus Ripley / by T. T. Wingett.

  • Wingett, T. T.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The defects of the lunacy law; a vindication of the decision of the Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, in the case of Nottidge versus Ripley / by T. T. Wingett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    5/20 (page 5)
    Christ; that Cromwell, who killed him, and reigned in his stead, was the devil; and that Charles the Second was Christ come again. What was then a tenable opinion and matter of faith with multitudes, is now recognised, when occuring spontaneously in the individual, as a delusion, and indicative of unsound mind. It is sufficiently clear to the minds of all those familiar with the features of mental aberration, that Miss Nottidge, who believed that a certain clergyman was the Deity, was in this latter condition ; and this judgment gains confirmation when we reflect upon the fact, acknowledged in court by different members of the Agapemone, that far from it being one of the doctrines of the association to regard its head and chief as an incarnation of the Almighty, they pronounced that the individual must be insane who entertained such a belief. What, in days of ignorance, was merely a fana- tical error, becomes, in more enlightened times, a sign of disease. It would give us no cause of alarm to hear a thoroughly ignorant individual affirm that ten times ten were ninety-nine ; but it would give us cause for serious apprehension if an accomplished friend made a similar affirma- tion. The experience of every day pronounces these distinctions to be just and true ; and we rather treat in a lunatic asylum what were for- merly called “ false and pretended prophecies,” than punish them with u forfeiture of all goods