JURIES, JUDGES, AND INSANITY. 441 



men of common-sense, are quite as well able as medical men to say 

 whether a person is insane or not. In the last number of this Journal 

 we gave a report of a trial which took place in Scotland for the reduc- 

 tion of a will, in which the judge directed the jury, with the greatest 

 assurance, that the symptoms which preceded insanity and indicated 

 its approach, in an ordinary case, went on increasing as the disease 

 advanced, and implied that, as they had not done so in the case in 

 question, it was preposterous to allege insanity. 



To our mind, the evidence of insanity in that case was conclusive, 

 but at any rate the statement of the judge was utterly untrue, as 

 a very little knowledge of insanity would have taught him ; and we 

 cannot help thinking that the authoritative enunciation of such false 

 doctrine to a jury is nothing less than a judicial misdemeanor. One 

 cannot justly complain that judges should be ignorant of insanity, 

 seeing that only by long experience and study is a true knowledge of 

 it to be acquired; but it is a fair ground of complaint that, being 

 ignorant, they should speak as confidently and as foolishly as they 

 sometimes do. Here, as in other scientific matters, it is not intuition, 

 but experience, which giveth understanding. 



Not only is it the fact that judges are ignorant, but they are too 

 often hostile. Governed by the old and barbarous dictum that knowl- 

 edge of right and wrong is the proper criterion of responsibility when 

 insanity is alleged, they resent angrily the allegation of insanity in 

 any case in which the person has not lost all knowledge of right and 

 wrong. Believing that medical men are striving to snatch the ac- 

 cused person from their jurisdiction, they are jealous of interference, 

 are eager to secure a conviction, and sometimes lose the impartiality 

 becoming the judge in the zeal proper to the partisan. The reporters 

 are happily good to them, in forbearing to report all they say and do, 

 or we fear that the dignity of the bench w r ould have suffered more in 

 public estimation even than it has done of late years. 



It is useless to say smooth things when things are not smooth. 

 There is a direct conflict between medical knowledge and judge-made 

 law, 1 which must go on until bad law is superseded by just principles 



1 Dr. Landor says : " If the principle that it is essential to institute a thorough ex- 

 amination of the individual's past and present condition before determining his state of 

 mind is the right one, then the proceedings of lawyers are in complete antagonism to 

 truth. There can be no conflict between propositions more complete. Medicine de- 

 clares that insanity is a physical and corporeal disease ; Law, that it is not. Medicine 

 says that imbecility and insanity are different conditions ; Law, that they are identical. 

 Medicine asserts that a theoretical study of mental diseases and defects is necessary to a 

 proper understanding of such diseases and defects ; Law denies this, and says that insan- 

 ity is a fact to be determined by any dozen of ordinary men, in consultation, on the case, 

 selected at random from any class of the population. Medicine says that a man may be 

 insane and irresponsible, and yet know right from wrong ; Law says that a knowledge of 

 right and wrong is the test both of soundness of mind and responsibility to the law. 

 Medicine says restrain and cure the insane and imbecile sufferer. The object of the ac- 



