266 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECTIONS. 
Medical Certificates of Insanity. 
By Freperic Norton Mannine, M.D., Inspector-General of the 
nsane, New South Wales. 
[Read before the Medical Section of the Royal Society of N.S.W., 
15 June, 1883.) 
By the Lunacy Act which came into operation in January, 1879, 
two certificates by legally qualified medical practitioners to the 
effect that the individual “is insane, and a proper person to be 
en 
Though full, complete, and in most respects, excellent certificates 
have been furnished by the majority of medical practitioners m 
the inception of the Act, its requirements, which are not_greater 
than those of the statutes in force in Great Britain and Ireland, 
During the last two years the importance of the certificates and 
the necessity for filling them in fully have been muc more 
affording evidence of the insanity of the patient, and being gpa 
unsatisfactory documents, giving little assistance to the ney 5 
officers of the hospitals into which the patients are admitted, 
calculated to add little to the reputation of the writers if they 
