Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the chemical expert, who deals with matters which all persons acknowledge to lie beyond the range of untaught apprehension. There are few who, without having had a special chemical training, would venture to pronounce an opinion on the value of the chemical evidence given in a case of poisoning, but everybody thinks himself competent to say whether a man is mad or not; and as the common opinion of an insane person is that he is either a raging maniac or that he has some outrageous delusion, it is no wonder that judgments have sometimes been rash and censures unjust. Meanwhile the physician, confident in the assurance that patient and careful observation of in- sanity, with the earnest desire to understand its nature, does fit him to express with authority the results of his experience, must not shrink from pronouncing his opinion sincerely and fearlessly, however unpopular it may be. A wretch foredoomed to insanity by mal-organization or hereditary defect, or driven mad by poverty, or by disap- pointment acting on a distempered brain, has no other friends in the world. . . . The same courage which causes the physician to brave the dangers of pestilence should support him in this duty beneath the assaults of pestilent tongues and pens. Not the voice of the people calling for executions, nor the severities of the bench frowning down psychological truth, should shake his pur- pose as an inquirer and a witness. His business is to declare the truth. Society must deal with the truth as it pleases. (Conolly.) In the following chapters I shall limit myself to a con- sideration of those forms of mental derangement concern-