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.

    281/356 (page 245)
    FEATUKES OF EPILEPTIC HOMICIDE. been subject to epilepsy for years, and it became evident tbat the theft had been the result of mental disorder connected with the disease. He manifested two quite different natures. The one was limited to about a week before and after the fits, when he was irritable, gloomy, intemperate, prone to violence, and capable of every imaginable mischief. It was mainly at this time that, while preserving sufficient lucidity to execute intentionally an act, he failed in the necessary discernment to judge of its morality, as also in the necessary self-control to abstain from doing it. During the other condition, which was the normal one, his cha- racter was quite a contrast; it was that of a man in the full possession of his senses, and free from any extrava- gance. Sometimes in place of this moral insanity there was an attack of incoherent and furious mania. What shall be said of the philosophy which would acknowledge the intellectual mania to be the result of disease, and yet declare the moral mania to be nothing more than depravity ? It cannot be said that there are special features so distinctly marking an epileptic homicide as to enable us to identify it on every occasion; but those which will commonly be observed are an absence of intelligible motive, an absence of premeditation, great determination and ferocity in the execution, much more violence than necessary being used, an absence of secresy in the exe- cution or of concealment afterwards, a great indifference and absence of remorse, and an incomplete and frag- mentary remembrance of all the circumstances, if not