The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-08-11
Reprinted from The American Lawyer. I

Reprlnted from The American Lawyer,
 July. 1907.
 There Is admitted to exist in the legal profession and among distinguished judges a great conflict of opinion as to the value to be attached to the testimony of alienist in cases of alleged insanity l confine my remarks to the so-called criminal insane
 This difference arises from the loose practice, largely from necessity in many cases, of permitting any graduate of a medical school to give his s4estimony as to facts bearing on criminal responsibility where the defense of insanity is interpos- ed by defendant. The Country doctor" who has never entered the wards of an Insane hospital Is thus primarily liable for many indiserimfnate criticisms of the misstyled alenist which has tended to diseredit the testimony of the really learned expert in mental or brain dis- eases.
 The ancient delusion was that insane persons were possessed of devils, the Yic- tims oftheir own wiekedness and evil passions, who could be cured only by dl- vine power. The modern and more en- frightened theory Is that insanity Is dis ease of the brain, whose normal func- tions are disturbed to the point of ira tionality, acquired either by heredity or environment, one or both.
 It is only in modern times, chiefly In the last century, that the nature, causes and results of this brain disturbance have been thoroughly investigated. This has been done chiefly by medical super intendents and others connected with those humane and beneicent institutions founded for the care and often the sure of the insane.
 It is only the testimony of such experts that real V1lua They should be versed in three departments of learning: Q) In psychology, which em- braces knowledge of the mind and it's faculties as distinguished from the body; @ in forensic medicine, especially h. sanity in It's medico-legal relations (8 the law governing the legal responsibility of the criminal insane.
 A physician who Is deficient In any of these respects Is no alenist, and his opinion should weigh but slightly with iuries or courts, unless his testimony Is based upon an intimate personal &C., qualntanee with the defenrant
 The law governing legal responsibility, as settled by the English justices m McNaughton's case (decided in 1S43) is well known, and has the endorsement of the weight of judicial decision in this country. The rule there settled Is, that the plea of insanity in criminal cases will not avail if the defendant under stood the nature and quality of the crime committed at the time of It's commission, and knew 1t was wrong or Illegal.
 The test, which was originally based on the ignorant opinion of physicians, Is now admitted to be repugnant to facts well known to every intelligent expert who has made study of the subject. It was unanimously repudiated by a con- ference of English medical alienists over forty years ago in q meeting In the city of London, and no superintendent of the hundreds of lunatic asylums in America or Great Britain can be found today who would risk his reputation by endorsing it. The Alabama supreme court more than twenty years since, after reviewing the authorities, adopted the modern view In Parsons Vs. the State, reported in the eighty-first volume of the Alabama re- ports, and republished in the siXtieth vol ume of the American reports. The Chi cago Legal Journal in publishing this de- cision observed that 1t came nearer har- monizlng the views of the medical and of the legal professions than the pre- vious deliverance of any other judge or court. It Is there settled that the sa called right and wrong test" Is based on an ignorant and erroneous view of the disease of insanity and that the true test is, not the capacity to distln- guish the nature and quality of the act done, or to know 1t was illegal or wrong, but the power to control the will so as to voluntarily abstain from doing the act. There can be no no criminal act without the concurrence of two clements: ID