LAW AND INSAmTT. 77 



LAW AI^D IJN^SAI^ITY/ 



By HENKY MAUDSLEY, M.D. 



LOOKIISTG back at the strange and erroneous notions which were 

 formerly entertained of the nature and causes of insanity, and 

 considering what little observation was made of its manifold varieties, 

 we cannot wonder that its jurisprudence was in a very defective state. 

 At first two kinds of insanity only seem to have been recognized by 

 English law — idiocy and lunacy : the idiot who, from his nativity, by 

 a perpetual infirmity is no7i compos^ and the lunatic, who hath some- 

 times his understanding, and sometimes not, aliquando gaudet liicidis 

 intervallis, and therefore is non compos mentis, so long as he hath not 

 understanding. But as time went on a partial insanity was recognized 

 as distinct from total insanity, although this partial insanity was de- 

 clared not to absolve a person from responsibility for his criminal acts. 

 " There is," says Lord Hale, " a partial insanity, and a total insanity. 

 The former is either in respect to things, quoad hoc vel illud insanire. 

 Some persons that have a competent use of reason in respect of some 

 subjects, are yet under a particular dementia in respect of some par- 

 ticular discourses, subjects, or applications ; or else it is partial in re- 

 spect of degrees ; and this is the condition of very many, especially 

 melancholy persons, who for the most part discover their defect in ex- 

 cessive fears and griefs, and yet are not wholly destitute of the use of 

 reason ; and this partial insanity seems not to excuse them in the com- 

 mitting of any oflense for its matter capital ; for, doubtless, most persons 

 that are felons of themselves and others are under a degree of partial 

 insanity when they commit these offenses. It is very difficult to define 

 the invisible line that divides perfect and partial insanity ; but it must 

 rest upon circumstances duly to be weighed by judge and jury, lest, 

 on the one side, there be a kind of inhumanity toward the defects of 

 human nature ; or, on the other side, too great an indulgence given to 

 great crimes." The invisible line which it was so difficult to define was 

 not, let it be noted, between sanity and insanity, but between perfect 

 and partial insanity. It was thought no inhumanity toward the de- 

 fects of human nature to punish as a fully responsible agent a person 

 who was suffering from partial insanity, whatever influence the disease 

 might have had upon his unlawful act. 



The principle thus laid down by Lord Hale was subsequently acted 

 upon in English courts. Thus, in the trial of Arnold, an undoubted 

 lunatic, for shooting at Lord Onslow, in 1723, ^Ir. Justice Tracy said: 

 " It is not every kind of frantic humor, or something unaccountable 

 in a man's actions, that points him out to be such a madman as is ex- 



^ From advance sheets of " Responsibility in Mental Disease," No. 9 of the " Interna- 

 tional Scientific Series." 



