NEW QUESTIONS IN MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 463 



and its consequences are based on delusions, either concealed or 

 openly confessed. The action of alcohol seems to suspend some 

 governing center, and capacity to discriminate the folly of the 

 act. The mind appears to be eclipsed, and previous standards of 

 truth and honor are overshadowed. All the former vigor remains, 

 or appears to be intact ; judgment and reason display vigor and 

 clearness in criminal acts and conduct. Motives and purposes of 

 life have changed, although the form and semblance of the past 

 conduct remain. 



Innumerable illustrations are seen among petty criminals, so 

 called, where the acts have preceded the drink craze, and always 

 been executed while the victim was using spirits in small quanti- 

 ties. Premeditation, acute reasoning, and apparent consciousness 

 of acts and their consequences, preceding a drink excess, either 

 associated with a moderate use of spirits or immediately before 

 spirits are used in excess, should always be regarded as symptoms 

 of mental derangement. 



The use of spirits for the purpose of committing crime is an- 

 other disputed question in courts. 



Crimes which are supposed to have been committed by persons 

 who deliberately used spirits for this special purpose are com- 

 monly found to have been stimulated and provoked by other 

 causes. To give spirits to a person and encourage him to commit 

 crime may not be an unusual occurrence, but its consummation is 

 an accident and exceedingly uncertain. On general principles 

 the natural tendency of an inebriate's mind is to ignore all 

 restraint and obligation, legal, social, and moral. The higher 

 governing centers are depressed and more or less paralyzed. The 

 senses are deranged, and false impressions are constantly received, 

 and the power of analysis and reason is diminished and broken 

 up. All higher relations of duty are obscured, and only the 

 lowest, most transient impulses control the mind. At this time 

 temptations to acts that are criminal, urged on the bewildered 

 mind, may be acted upon, from simple incapacity to reason and 

 understand the consequences. This blurred mental state is of 

 short duration, and merges quickly into anaesthetic physical 

 and mental states, or delusional conceptions, of which fear and 

 suspicion are prominent. The use of spirits to give courage to 

 commit crime very often produces the opposite effect, partic- 

 ularly where an interval occurs between the use of spirits and 

 the performance of the act. 



The courage or stimulation of the first stage from the action 

 of alcohol on the brain is of short, uncertain duration, and liable 

 any moment to change to abject fear or other states. 



There are two conditions in which crime is committed by per- 

 sons who drink spirits for this purpose : one, where they become 



