154 THE FOPULAB SCIENCE MONTHLY 



RESPONSIBILITY IN CRIME FROM THE MEDICAL 



STANDPOINT. 



By SANGER BKOWN, Al. D., 



PROFESSOR OK MEDICAL Jl KI!<PRUDENCE, RUSH MEDICAL COLLEGE, CHICAGO. 



THE reason why a physician should be called upon to discuss 

 such a subject as responsibility in crime must be because 

 some organ or organs of the body are concerned, and he ought to 

 know more about the structure and function of the bodily organs 

 than other people. I believe medicine must furnish all the essen- 

 tial fundamental facts in the study of this subject. 



According to the medical view of responsibility in crime, the 

 mental status of the individual has to be investigated. In times 

 past, a wide diversity of views has obtained regarding mind. 

 Popularly expressed, some of the salient features of the view 

 which has obtained for several centuries past have been that 

 mind was a special endowment, bestowed by the Creator upon 

 man, and upon no other animal. In some way not quite clearly 

 understood, a will was also given to man, by which he was allowed 

 a sort of freedom to choose as to whether he should allow the 

 Creator to control his mind, or whether he should yield the man- 

 agement of it to an opposing power or Satan. Various manifesta- 

 tions on the part of the individual were regarded from time to 

 time as evidence that either one power or the other had control, 

 according as his conduct corresponded or not with what was com- 

 monly regarded as the best interests of the society in which he 

 lived. The ordinary symptoms of acute mania were regarded as 

 positive evidence that the evil one had possession, and the treat- 

 ment consisted in placing upon the afflicted person charms, amu- 

 lets, etc., which were regarded as obnoxious to the evil power, 

 with tlie h()X)e of making his tenancy uncomfortable, and thus in- 

 ducing him to withdraw. 



This view is the last survivor of those once so prevalent, which 

 sought to explain everything of a mysterious nature by hypothe- 

 cating an omnipotent personality presiding over it, and it pre- 

 vailed exclusively during the early growth and development of 

 our present criminal law. 



Now, it is the proper province of modern medicine to study the 

 construction and function of all the bodily organs, but for various 

 reasons the brain has been the last of the larger and more impor- 

 tant organs to be carefully studied ; within the last decade, how- 

 ever, it has been very thoroughly investigated. 



The result of that study tends to show indeed, has demon- 

 stratedthat the functional product of the brain is mind, in pre- 

 cisely the same sense that bile is the functional product of the 



