States of unconsciousness : irresistible impulses, epilepsy, treadaway.

Date:
[1878]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: States of unconsciousness : irresistible impulses, epilepsy, treadaway. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    she did not attend to the injunctions of those around, refused food and medicine, glided about the house, but when obstructed or thwarted, her force became excessive, almost convulsive, and her bearing became so threatening as to alarm all around her, and to show that resistance would have provoked extreme violence. This condition remained for thirty hours. She then recognised her friends, but had no conception either of the fit or of what followed.* Had this woman wreaked her insensate vengeance upon supposed opponents she would assuredly have been arraigned, and, failing the testimony of a judicious medical witness, would have been condemned. The conflict indeed between law and medicine on this point is painfully conspicuous, and there is even a gloomy diversity of opinion between experts, for one has said what is tantamount to a suggestion that lunatics, and consequently epileptics, should be hung; we imagine upon Voltaire’s precept “ pour encourager les autres.” The great majority of these, actuated not by humanity alone, but by scientific conviction, advocate leniency and for- bearance, even the abrogation of capital punishment. The custom of different nations has likewise betrayed how irrecon- cilable legislative provisions are upon this question. In Eome an epileptic was held to be irresponsible for three days subsequent to an attack; in France the onus of proving the sanity, and therefore the accountability of an accused during the same period is thrown upon the prosecution, while in our own code there is no provision similar to this, every case being tried on its own merits, and until very lately neither epilepsy nor the manifold deviations from right reason by which it is surrounded have been admitted as exonerative. A distinction has been essayed in order to attach responsibility to civil and exemption to criminal delinquency on the part of epileptics; but the scheme appears to be unpractical and un philosophical, and we cannot accordingly reverence justice or mercy in sparing the lives of such offenders and then handing them over to life- long penal servitude. Again, it has been argued that should the offence be connected with or the result of a prominent or predicable delusion, a fair ground for pleading exculpation was established. Attention has been very generally directed to these subjects by the misadventure which was imminent in the person of Treadaway, a murderer, who was convicted and con- demned to death. This culprit, according to evidence adduced in court and obtained from his consistent narrative, was a hosier, * British Medical Journal, No. 846, March 17, 1877; abridged from a paper by Dr. Holland, p. 324.