260 PSYCHIATRY 



inal's act has a definite motive, and that his crimes are to his tem- 

 porary or apparent advantage. The moral imbecile, on the other 

 hand, is in most cases a person whose acts are done without rational 

 motive, or are to satisfy only some morbid feeling, perhaps remotely 

 sexual, perhaps something not easily defined, a kind of atavistic 

 lust-hunger. 



But no definite laws can yet be laid down. Each case must be 

 studied by itself in the light of our best clinical knowledge of what 

 constitutes an insane mind. We must bear in mind in doing this that 

 society cannot on the one hand afford to be cruel, and on the other it 

 cannot afford to set aside easily individual responsibility. 



For the purpose of securing the ends of justice in any of these cases, 

 such laws as have been enacted in Maine, New Hampshire, and 

 Vermont, and especially in Massachusetts, are best calculated to 

 help on the aims of justice. These laws authorize the prosecuting 

 attorney or judge to place the accused in a hospital where he can be 

 under constant surveillance of physicians, trained experts, and 

 attendants. 



The Massachusetts law, for example, reads as follows: 



" Chapter 219, Section II. If a person under indictment for any 

 crime is at the time appointed for trial, or at any time prior thereto, 

 found by the court to be insane, or is found by two experts in in- 

 sanity designated by the court to be in such mental condition that 

 his committal to an insane hospital is necessary for the proper care 

 or for the proper observation of such person pending the deter- 

 mination of his insanity, the court may cause him to be committed 

 to a state insane hospital for such time and under such limitations 

 as the court may order." 



Psychiatry and Forensic or Legal Medicine 



Forensic or legal medicine as a separate branch of science seems in 

 a way to have died out. It used to be systematically taught in a 

 number of our medical schools, but the chairs have been abandoned. 

 This is not because the subjects which are dealt with have ceased to 

 be of importance (from 1894 to 1899 there were 854 contributions 

 to the forensic medicine), but because they have been assigned to 

 different specialties -- the chemist, pathologist, psychiatrists, neu- 

 rologists, and lawyers. Forensic medicine has been broken up into 

 special branches and hardly exists any more as a particular depart- 

 ment of human knowledge. 



Psychiatry has much to do with the law, however, and some 

 forensic medical knowledge may be considered almost a part of the 

 requirement of a psychiatrist. Happily, the harmonious cooperation 

 of law and medicine in the professional activity of the alienist is an 



