The legal doctrine of responsibility in cases of insanity, connected with alleged criminal acts / by Forbes Winslow.

  • Winslow, Forbes, 1810-1874.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The legal doctrine of responsibility in cases of insanity, connected with alleged criminal acts / by Forbes Winslow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    4/44 (page 4)
    cinations are always present in every case of fully developed Insanity. This is the popular and, I may add, the generally received notion of mental derangement. This mistaken view of the nature of Insanity has, I believe, led to much discrepancy and conflict of opinion in our courts of law respecting the legal question of responsibility in connection with certain cases of imputed alienation of mind. In all the great criminal trials involving a consideration of this question, the judges have almost invariably laid a stress on the presence or absence of delusion; associating it, however, with the question, “ Is the person, whose mind is said to be insane, capable of distinguishing right from wrong ? ” In the case Bainbridge v. Bainbridge, Lord Campbell ad- mitted that Insanity might exist without delusion. I have no doubt other judges, if they have not propounded literally the same doctrine, have practically acknowledged its truth, by sanctioning the acquittal of prisoners on the ground of Insanity unassociated with any obvious delusion or affection of the reasoning powers. It is difficult for an inexperienced person to realise the great medical truth, that disease of the mind, and disease of a serious character, may exist without any appreciable aberration of the ideas or apparent impairment of what are termed the intellectual poivers. I do not refer to conditions of morbid mental exaltation, often dependent upon a transitory congestion of the blood-vessels on the surface of the brain, or to that mental depression so frequently consequent upon an obstruc- tion to the free circulation of the blood through the heart, or even to the extravagance of thought and conduct exhibited in many cases of unrecognised Insanity ; but to positive creations of the morbid fancy, to delusive images leading the person to believe that to exist which no sane person would believe to exist, and which, in reality, has no existence apart from himself and his distempered imagination. In the majority of cases the premonitory stage of Insanity is evidenced by some palpable disorder of the affections, temper, propensities, moral sense, character, and conduct of the indi-