The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1909-08-06
HARRY THAW AND OTHERS.

Harry Thaw do not at all agree with
the alienists who recently appeared
in the trial of the Smell will case in
Illinois. The alienists put on the
stand in the Smell case agreed that
outbursts of passion and profanity
must be considered as evidence of
mental disorder. The New York
alienists, ON the contrary, insist
that coolness, powers Of discrimln-
alton and analysis, retentive memory
and other like qualities are as often
evidences of insanity as Of sanity.
In the case of Thaw they assert
that the exhibition of these quail
tiles on the stand, under the long
aud torturing examination by
Jerome, are so many added proofs
of the insanity of man trying to
prove himself sane. There is
reason for believing, however, that
if the New York alienists had been
employed by the contestant in the
Smell case they would have testified,
with equal facility, that the old
mans many outbursts of rage and
violence were so many proofs of a
| diseased mind.
Who, then, is safel- So far as ex-
pert testimony goes, it has only set
up something like the famed coon
| trap which could ''kotch 'em a
| comm or gwine." People of
ealmness and composure may be in
the same boat with the raging and
those possessed of devils. The
qualities of calmness and composure,
the alienists assure as, may be easily
Simulated By New York people as
mad as Msrch hares, while other
alienists are equally positive that
the exhibition of such qualities was
impossible to an Illinois man still
sane enough to attend to his
busiaes7 in a very businesslike way.
Does the standard of sanlty change
with state lines? We are all left up
iI the air, or would be il we paid
much attention to the deductions of
mental alienists. The fact is, one
man is about as capable as another
OF identifying lunatic. The luna
tic being abnormal reverses the
normal rule that actions speak
louder than words. With him
words speak louder than actions up
to the point of danger in the case.
One man is as goLd an alienist as
another when he meets an indivi.
dual holding hal fluctuations. If one
encounters a person who thinks
himself to be Caesar, Napoleon or
the pope of Rome, he aeeds no ex-
pert assurance that he is confronted
with a lunatic whose lunacy has
reached an advanced stage in the
progressive development of the
disease. The lunatic in such a
case may have all the outward seen
ing of we'll ordered mind, IN ap-
parel, in expression of fcountenance,
and in expression of thought, until
the line of his hallucination is reach
ed. There he will cease to be nor
NAL, and the layman as easily as
the expert will know him.
The long and tortuous line of ex
animation of Thaw by Jerome, and
the learned and lengthy opinions of
the experts, appear as labor lost in
the light of the pregr ant questions
addressed to Thaw with which the
presiding justice Illuminated the
case. These questions related to
rhaw's delusions of grandIloqusnce,
the most striking evidence of ais in
sanity at the time of the killing, and
which led him to select a public
place for the commission of the
CRIME. in the most dramatic possible
way, instead of executing private
vengeance in a private way and in a
private place. Jusuce Mills indi-
GATED several things which have oc.
cured during the present trial show
L.. al