A monograph on mental unsoundness / By Francis Wharton.

  • Wharton, Francis, 1820-1889.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A monograph on mental unsoundness / By Francis Wharton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    16/244 (page 6)
    XII. TREATMENT OF INSANE CRIMINALS, § 259. Necessity of separate places of confinement in which insane criminals can be placed, I 259. (1.) Fob Retribution, \ 260. In most, if not all, cases of crime resulting from insane impulse, there is original responsibility, \ 260. Insanity, in most cases, the result of moral excess, \ 261-9. Qualified responsibility of lunatics, \ 261-9. ' (2.) Fob Peevention, \ 270. Mischief to society if monomaniacs are suffered to go at large, \ 270. Necessity of restraint, \ 271. (3.) Fob Example, \ 272. Contagiousness of unchecked crime, § 272. (4.) Foe Refoem, \ 273. Impossibility of patient recovering when permitted to run at large, I 273. Injury to the community from the want of secondary punishments, the result being acquittals of dangerous parties, from an unwill- ingness to see the severer penalties inflicted, § 274. Ordinary penitentiaries inadequate, $ 275. And so of ordinary lunatic asylums, $ 276. CHAPTER I. MENTAL UNSOUNDNESS CONSIDERED LEGALLY. § 1. Three questions exist in which mental unsoundness becomes a subject of inquiry in the courts of the United States: I. Capacity to perform particular acts for the disposal of property, such as making contracts or gifts, and executing deeds or wills, in which cases the question is brought up by contesting the validity of the particular act itself. II. General business capacity, in which case the question arises upon a petition to the chancellor or proper judicial officer of the jurisdiction, for a decree pronouncing the party to be incapable from lunacy or habitual drunkenness, of managing his estate, and transferring the cus- tody of it to a committee. III. Responsibility for crime. In each of these relations the tests of unsoundness are distinct. In the first a very modified degree of incapacity will be sufficient, as will presently be seen, when accompanied with fraud, imposition or over exercise of authority, to set aside a contract or to invalidate a will. In the second a much less degree of general capacity is' sufficient, than is necessary in the third; for there must always be a number of cases in which a party is morally capable of crime, and yet intellectually inca- pable of business. Keeping these facts in view, it is proposed to dis- cuss the subject under the following heads: I. What degree of unsoundness invalfdates a contract or will. 1st. Imbecility generally, and herein of fraud and compulsion. 2d. Partial insanity. 3d. Lucid intervals. 4th. Intoxication. II. What is necessary to be proved in order to deprive a party of the management of his estate. III. What degree of unsoundness avoids responsibility for crime.