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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    CONCEALMENT OF DELUSIONS. place under Government, and who was detained there for twenty years. For the last fifteen years he was there he had shown no symptom of his particular form of insanity, and for the last eight years no symptom of insanity at all. After a very strong effort Dr. Hood obtained his dis- charge ; but he had not been gone five months before he was sent back to the hospital, having addressed three or four letters to the Queen asking for the hand of Princess Alice. Again, it is well known that some melancholic patients are so silent that it is only after their recovery we discover what their delusions really were, although these may have been of an extreme character, and may have dictated the most extraordinary conduct, and occa- sioned the most grievous suffering to themselves. How, then, is it possible in such cases to determine what actions are or are not in relation with the delusions ? Many times is the asylum-physician perplexed to divine what are the unexpressed delusions that are holding possession of his patient's mind and governing his conduct. If he could always do so, his duties would be far less anxious than they are now ; but he might take the most acute counsel of any court, place him before patients whose lives were under the sway of delusions, and defy him with all his skill in examination and cross-examination to elicit what those delusions were. If he himself can guess, it is only because his conjectures are informed by past experience. Many a gibing sneer and ill-timed jest at medical testimony in courts of justice would be spared if those who utter them so glibly were to spend a few months in an asylum, and thus to bring home to their