PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECTIONS. 267 
should by chance be produced as evidence in a Law Court ; whilst a 
few have been so defective that they could not be received. 
Copies of twelve of these received within the last fifteen months (the 
names of the medical practitioners being omitted) I now place on 
the table, for your perusal. 
I desire to say at once that in no case admitted into institutions 
for the insane during the last or any previous year was there 
reason to doubt but that mental symptoms sufficient to justify the 
temporary confinement and medical treatment of the patient 
existed at the time the certificates were signed. In some rare 
and exceptional cases I have seen reason to doubt the wisdom of 
the course taken; but during an official experience, extending now 
over fourteen years, I have never had reason to think that any medi- 
cal practitioner, in discharging what has been fitly called “this great 
social responsibility,” acted otherwise than with honest intent, or 
than as in his judgment seemed best for the patient and those 
around him. 
The importance of these certificates as official documents, the 
information they afford, if fully and carefully prepared, to the 
medical officers of hospitals and licensed houses, their liability to 
be produced in Law Courts, and the fact that each one is freighted 
with the welfare, present and future, of the person concerning 
whom it is given, make their proper preparation a weighty 
| question, and I think that I may not occupy your time unprofitably 
| y entering somewhat fully into it. habe 
| e first question which arises is the policy of limiting the 
‘Signature of these certificates to medical men occupying official 
positions. Our Act—I venture to think wisely—makes no such 
on the subject of psychological medicine. But this is so no longer. 
Every medical school teaches psychological aaa as part of its 
rri i tal di 
