442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in harmony with the teachings of science. For many years, by all au- 

 thorities on insanity, in season and out of season, the truth has been vr 

 vain proclaimed: many times have futile attempts been made to arouse 

 attention to the iniquity of the law as laid down by the judges ; but it 

 is still necessary for us to go on protesting, as our forefathers did, and 

 as our children's children may have to do. We may, at any rate, take 

 leave to characterize the administration of the law on every occasion 

 in the plain terms which it deserves. Under the name of justice, 

 grievous injustice has sometimes been done, and it would be easy to 

 point to more than one instance in which murder has been avenged by 

 the judicial murder of an insane and irresponsible person. The saddest 

 and most humiliating disease with which mankind is afflicted, and 

 which should rightly make the sufferer an object of the deepest compas- 

 sion, only avails in England in the nineteenth century to bring him, in 

 the event of his doing violence, to the edge of the scaffold or over it. To 

 this point have eighteen hundred and seventy-two years of Christianity 

 brought us ! And Science protests in vain ! Without laying claim to 

 much gift of prophecy, one may, perhaps, venture to predict that the 

 time will come when the inhabitants of the earth will look back upon 

 us with astonishment and horror, not otherwise than as we now look 

 back upon the execution of old women for witchcraft in past times a 

 barbarity which the judges were the last to be willing to abandon, 

 which they clung to long after it had been condemned by enlightened 

 opinion. Indeed, there has not been, as Mr. Bright once said in the 

 House of Commons, a single modification of the law in the direction 

 of mercy and justice which has not been opposed by the judges ! 



The ground which medical men should firmly and consistently take 

 in regard to insanity is, that it is a physical disease ; that they alone 

 are competent to decide upon its presence or absence ; and that it is 

 quite as absurd for lawyers or the general public to give their opinion on 

 the subject in a doubtful case, as it would be for them to do so in a case 

 of fevei*. For what can they know of its predisposing and exciting 



tion of the law is punishment, and, if its severity is mitigated, it is not by the law, but by 

 the suspension of the law, by authority above the law. The Law is thus entirely antago- 

 nistic to Medicine on all those questions of mental science which involve the freedom 

 and well-being of the imbecile and the insane, and which often determine whether they 

 shall be put to an ignominious death or not, whether they shall be deprived of their property 

 or suffered to retain it. This antagonism is, therefore, a most serious matter to the in- 

 sane, their friends and families, not less serious to judges and legislators, and of the 

 deepest interest to both medical and legal professions. For with such opinions inculcated 

 by the law, existing ignorances are more deeply rooted in the public mind, so that the 

 difficulty in treating the insane by medical men, and in giving testimony in courts, is 

 greatly increased, especially when great judges remark (influenced, no doubt, by the de- 

 grading exhibition of opposing bitterness of medical men in courts), that ' the introduction 

 of medical opinions and theories on this subject has proceeded from the vicious principle of 

 considering insanity a disease, whereas it is a fact to be ascertained by evidence, in like 

 manner as any other fact, and no more is necessary than to try the question by proof of 

 the habits, the demeanor, conversation, and acts of the alleged lunatic.' " 



