Lunacy in its relations to the state : a commentary on the evidence taken by the Committee of the House of Commons on Lunacy Law in the session of 1877 / by Sir James Coxe.

Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lunacy in its relations to the state : a commentary on the evidence taken by the Committee of the House of Commons on Lunacy Law in the session of 1877 / by Sir James Coxe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    11/50 page 11
    THE HABITUAL DRUNKARD. abstinence from intoxicating drink. Many medical men hold this decision to be mong, and are of opinion that an habitual drunkard, although rational for the time being, through com- pulsory abstinence, is yet not a fit person to be allowed his liberty or permitted freedom of action; and every one who has witnessed the distress and misery which the presence of an habitual drunkard in a family produces, cannot fail to feel much sympathy in this opinion. Still, so long as the State declines to recognise the condition of an habitual drunkard, restored to temporary sanity by abstinence from drink, as one of insanity, the medical profession can scarcely be allowed to take the law into their own hands and include tliis condition within the meaning of those terms with which the statutes define lunacy. It appears, however, that in practice, not only dipso- maniacs, but also patients affected with other forms of insanity, are occasionally detained in asylums for considerable periods after they have recovered their sanity, in the belief that their discharge would speedily be followed by a relapse; and a great deal may be said in favour of this course. It must frequently be of the utmost consequence to a family that its head should be prevented from gambling or squandering his means; but, on the other hand, there must be a limit to the paternal care of the State, and if a man has not the wit to take care of his own interests, but gives way to inordinate drink- ing, inordinate sexual indulgence, or to reckless gambling, tliere is not in that, so far as the State has yet determined, sufficient cause for its interference. There is, however, reason to think that the meaning of the statutory terms of lunacy has of recent years been considerably extended, and that a belief is pretty widely held that forms of thought and feeling that were formerly regarded as mere eccentricities or absurdities of character, are now frequently dealt with as insanity. And thus it may foUow, by a further expansion of men's views in this direction, without any special inter- ference on the part of the Legislature, that habitual indulgence in intoxicating liquors, or habitual indulgence in immoral excesses, will eventually come to be dealt with as insanity. For it has to be considered that what constitutes insanity in
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3