INQUISITION INSANITY. 



body to receive absolution. As the Spaniards took the 

 inquisition with thorn to America, so the Portuguese 

 carried it to India, and established it at Goa. In the 

 18lh century, the power of the inquisition in Portugal 

 was restrained by the ordinance which commanded 

 that the accuser of the court should furnish the ac- 

 cu-cil with the heads of the accusation and the names 

 of the witnesses, that the accused should be allowed 

 to have the aid of counsel, and that no sentence of 

 the inquisition should be executed until con6rmed by 

 the royal council. The late king abolished the in- 

 quisition, not only in Portugal, but also in Brazil and 

 the East Indies, and caused all its records at Goa 

 to be burnt. 



The inquisition restored in Rome by Pius VI I., has 

 jurisdiction only over the clergy, and is not therefore 

 dangerous to those who are not Catholics. In 1826, 

 it condemned to death Caschiur, a pupil of the Pro- 

 paganda, who was appointed patriarch of Memphis, 

 but not accepted by the viceroy of Egypt. The pope 

 dumped the punishment into imprisonment for life. 

 His crime is unknown. 



Among the late works on the inquisition, are Llo- 

 rente's History of the Spanish Inquisition (Paris, 

 1815; in English, London, 1827), and Antonio Puig- 

 blanch's Inquisition Unmasked, from the Spanish 

 (London, 1816). The Records of the Inquisition, 

 from the original MSS., taken from the Inquisitorial 

 Palace at Barcelona, when it was stormed by the 

 Insurrectionists in 1819 (1828), contain interesting 

 reports of some particular cases. 



INQUISITION, PROCESS OF. This phrase is 

 used, on the continent of Europe, to designate that 

 kind of criminal process in which the court takes 

 upon itself the investigation of an offence, by appoint- 

 ing one of its members to collect the proofs of the 

 crime, as, for instance, in the German courts. Thus 

 the process of inquisition differs from what is called 

 the. process of accusation, where the court stands be- 

 tween the government and the accused, as it does in 

 England and the United States. In civil cases, the 

 process of accusation prevails also in the German 

 courts. See Process ; also Accusation, and Act. 



INSANITY, MENTAL DERANGEMENT. By 

 these general terms we understand every form of in- 

 tellectual disorder, whether consisting in a total want 

 or alienation of understanding, as in idiocy, or in the 

 diseased state of one or several of the faculties. 

 Medical writers have adopted different systems of 

 classification, in their treatment of this subject ; but 

 perhaps the most convenient is that which comprises 

 all mental diseases under the four heads of mania, 

 inelancholy,demency or fatuity, and idiocy. Lunacy, 

 in its proper sense, implies an influence of the changes 

 of the moon (Latin, lund; on the state of the mind 

 or body, of which modern science cannot recognise 

 the existence. It is true that many diseases are 

 periodical in their returns, and it is not improbable 

 that paroxysms of violence among insane persons, 

 may be really increased at the time of a full moon, 

 by the effect of the shadows of clouds, and other ob- 

 jt^cts, as ghosts are generally seen by moonlight ; 

 but any other lunar influence neither experience nor 

 science can discover. The causes of insanity are 

 divided by modern writers, into physical and moral. 

 Every excess of passion, joy, grief, anger, fear, 

 anxiety, &c., may become a moral cause of insanity. 

 Great political or civil revolutions have always been 

 observed to be attended with numerous cases of 

 mental derangement. Pinel observed this phenome- 

 non in France, after the revolution of 1789, and Dr 

 Rush describes similar effects, in the United States, 

 after the war of the revolution. Strong religious ex- 

 citement often produces similar results, although in 

 many cases, religious enthusiasm is only a form of 



the malady, and not a cause. Madden (Travels in 

 Egypt, Nubia, &c., 1830) states that insanity is rare 

 among the Mohammedans, and attributes it to their 

 consoling belief in the certainty of their salvation. 

 Dr Rush thinks that the disease is more common 

 among civilized communities than with savages, on 

 account of the greater influence of moral causes on 

 the former. The physical causes of insanity are 

 various and numerous ; diseases of various kinds, and 

 of different organs, bodily injuries or wounds, exces- 

 sive indulgence in eating, drinking, and other sensual 

 pleasures, privation, exposure to extreme cold or heat, 

 &c., are among them. Insane persons are often, 

 however, in good health, and dissection does not 

 always detect a disordered condition of the organs. 

 Philosophy is not sufficiently acquainted with the 

 mutual action and reaction of the body and the mind 

 on each other, to decide how far the disordered state 

 of the one is consistent with the sanity of the other ; 

 nor is it certain that there is any one organ or func- 

 tion which must be diseased to affect the mind. 

 Climate, age, occupation, and sex, are often mentioned 

 as causes influencing insanity. But climate does not 

 appear to be an exciting cause, although the moral, 

 civil, religious, or physical condition of a nation 

 may have rendered the disorder more frequent in 

 some countries than in others. The seasons, how- 

 ever, appear to exercise an influence, and it is gene- 

 rally observed that the cases of insanity are most 

 numerous in the hottest part of the year. Suicides 

 are most frequent when the thermometer is above 84. 

 Although many circumstances, both physical and 

 moral, appear to render the female sex roost liable to 

 insanity, it does not appear that the number of insane 

 females is greater than that of males : drunkenness 

 being more prevalent among the latter, may be one 

 cause of this. In bath sexes, the most active period 

 of life, from thirty to forty, presents the greatest 

 number of cases. In regard to occupation, sufficient 

 data do not exist to show that there is any decided 

 predominance of cases in any particular employ- 

 ment. 



Idiocy is either a congenital or an acquired defect 

 of the intellectual faculties, or, as Pinel defines it, an 

 obliteration, more or less absolute, of the functions 

 of the understanding and the affections of the heart. 

 Congenital idiocy may originate from a malformation 

 of the cranium, or of the brain itself; the senses are 

 often wanting, or defective, and life is commonly of 



gences, intemperance, fatigue, and from moral causes. 

 In this the senses may be partially affected, or quite 

 destroyed, and life often continues to old age. Abso- 

 lute idiocy admits of no cure ; but ii, should not too 

 hastily be concluded that a patient is in this state. 

 The term demency (fatuity, the pugta of the Greeks, 

 and dementia of later writers) is applied to a complete 

 or partial hebetude of individual faculties, particu- 

 larly those of association and comparison, producing 

 confusion of thoughts, loss of memory, childishness, 

 a diminution or loss of the powers of volition ; it 

 differs from idiocy in being curable. Persons are re- 

 duced to this state, because exterior objects make too 

 weak an impression on them ; the sensations are, 

 therefore, feeble, obscure, and incomplete; the patient 

 does not form a correct idea of objects, nor compare, 

 associate, or abstract ideas. It is oftt-n merely an 

 attendant of other diseases, or other forms of insanity, 

 and is frequently quite temporary, though it often be- 

 comes permanent. 



Mania (Greek, ^0.110., madness) is a species of men. 

 tal derangement, characterised by the disorder of 

 one or several of the faculties, or by a blind impulse 



