INSANITY AND 0R1M£. 575 



10.— INSANITY AND CRIME. 



Bij E, PARIS NESBITT. 



The questions to which I desire to call your attention 

 relate partly to law and partly to medical science. 



They form, indeed, a debatable ground on which lawyers 

 and doctors have from time to time fought with an energy 

 not unseasoned with acrimony, the latter being perhaps 

 more noticeable on the part of the medical profession. Dr. 

 Maudsley, in particular, speaks in the preface to his work on 

 " Responsibility in Mental Disease," of " the scorn and indig- 

 nation felt by those who observe with impatience the obstinate 

 prejudice with which English judges hold to an absurd 

 dictum which has long been discredited by medical science, 

 has been condemned in the severest terms by judicial authority 

 in America, and has been abandoned in other countries." 

 He refers here to a doctrine affecting the legal responsibility 

 under the Criminal Law of England of persons afflicted with 

 mental disease. I hope to be ajjle to show that the doctrine 

 as stated by Dr. Maudsley is by no means so well established 

 or so obstinately held as he seems to think, and that the law 

 of England, though not as cleai- as it might be, is, at all 

 events, in a sufficiently fluid condition to allow of its being 

 formulated into a shape consistent with the best knowledge 

 and wisdom derivable from the opinions of those who have 

 made lunacy their special study. These remarks apply only 

 to the substantive law which regulates the responsibility of 

 offenders. So far as regards the treatment of criminals on 

 the borderland between sanity and insanity, or who from 

 hereditary or inherent vicious tendencies are incapable of 

 reformation by ordinary punitive measures, there is still 

 much to be desired. Signs are not wanting, however, 

 that methods more humane and enlightened than those 

 hitherto in use will before long be resorted to in such cases. 



In the observations I have to make upon the responsibihty 

 of insane persons under the Criminal Law, I speak simply as 

 a lawyer and a jurist — as one who has studied the law as 

 actually existing, and who has considered in what direction and 

 to what effect it requires further definition and improvement. 

 From the point of view afforded by medical knowledge pure 

 and simple I have little or nothing to say. Though the 

 proverbial differences of doctors are displayed in this no less 

 than in other fields of their science, there is sufficient broad 

 general agreement among them to give to those who have 



