The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1882-01-11


greatly narrowed limits.
Third, we take issue squarely with the
proposition that "the standard of insanity
must be that of the law" Insanity, which
was at first thought to be possession by
devils, is now known to be disease of the
brain. There can be no insanity in healthy
brain. This being the case, the determine
tion of insanity in given case is a matter
for the physician and not for the lawyer.
The latter does not pretend to an ability to
treat the disease; why should he claim the
exclusive right to diagnosticate it? Is it
more pertinent for the law to decide what
shall be the test for insanity than for it to
fix upon some absolute and invariable test
for any other disease? The bench might as
well set standard of symptoms for cerebro-
spinal meningitis, or paralysis, or chorea, or
any other nervous disease, as for insanity.
Judge Doe, of New Hampshire, long ago ut
tered the following words, which are pecu-
liarly profitable reading in these days: ''If
the tests of insanity are matters OF law, the
practice of allowing experts to testify what
matters of fact, the judge should no longer
testify without being sworn as witness and
showing himself qualified to testify as
an expert.r The tests of insan-
ity are matters of fact, and they
are matters of fact in the domain
of medicine and not in that of law. The
enlightened opinion of the future will es-
TEEN it an outrage on justice that a judge
should give any such instructions as are
prayed for by the prosecution in the present
trial, for it is usurpation of the function Of
the jury, whose business it is to decide up
is that "the product of mental disease is
not contract, will or a crime;' whether
or not such mental disease really exists is a
question for the jury to answer, and the
judge should not prejudice them by any as
sumption of knowledge which those only
who have made special study of insanity
can possess, or by pretension that it is
proper for law to decide abstruse medical
problems.
The fourth point to which the govern
ment counsel asks the attention of the
court is that no delusion, the ability to dis
tinguish between right and wrong being
present, would excuse the prisoner. This
is positively startling, because, for many
years, it has been held by the law that GER
tain delusions were an excuse even for the
taking of life; as for example, if man has
delusion that another man is attempting
his life, and, in the attempt to save himself,
kills his supposed assassin, the law will not
hold him as a murderer, because, if the
state of affairs actually had existed which
the lunatic supposed did exist, he would
have been justified in his act. Hence, we
are surprised at so sweeping statement as
that which we have quoted. But, even If it
had been less broad, we could not give 1t
our assent; for the existence of insanity to
such degree as to give rise to delusion
which would prompt man to commit
crime, would necessarily lead one to doubt
the integrity not only of the part of the
mind from which the delusion sprang, but
also of other parts of it, not the least those
which preside over the reason and the will.
Is man to be punished because he is af-
ficted with disease? Is he "bound to be
reasonable in his unreason, sane in his in
sanity?"
We repeat that we have no desire to do
aught to set free the prisoner who is now on
trial for monstrous crime; we have no be-
lief in his insanity, and desire Ae law to
take its course. But we cannot pass unno-
ticed attempts to compass his conviction by
the presentation Of arguments which, how
ever legitimate they may be esteemed by
the prosecution, appear to us to be based
upon grossly incorrect views of what consti-
tutes responsibility in the insane, and upon
an altogether erroneous conception of the
province of the presiding judge. We cannot
better close this article than by quotation
from one of the principal alienists of the
present age, DR.. Henry Maudsley. of Lon
don. He says, "The right problem for
court of justice to place before scientific
witness is to trace connection not between
the delusion and the act, which may be un-
detectable-or, if detachable, such as would
not excuse the act if the delusion were true
but between the disease and the act.
Certainly it is an extraordinary demand to
make that, when two symptoms of disease
exist, the delusion and the criminal act, the
one should be proved to be the cause of the
other; that the effects of common cause
should be proved to be cause and effect.
Out of the depths of deranged feeling in
which the delusion is rooted there may
spring up at any moment insane impulses
which are quite independent of it, but which,
like it., are born of the disease"