Mad doctors, mad houses, and mad laws : in a series of three letters addressed to the editor of the "Scotsman." / by Angus Mackintosh.
- Date:
- 1864
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Mad doctors, mad houses, and mad laws : in a series of three letters addressed to the editor of the "Scotsman." / by Angus Mackintosh. 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.
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![who was detained for a considerable time at Saughtonhall some two or three years ago, and who has much testimony to give as to the fraudulent and mendacious manner in which he was dealt with there. In the resolutions of the College of Physicians, resolution 4th says that “ the peculiarity of the position of medical men in signing certificates, is that they are thereby brought in contact with persons who are not in full possession of their senses,” and so forth. Though the law makes medical certificates necessary before a man can be committed to an asylum, or, in the words of the College, “ placed under treatment,” it nowhere makes it compulsory on a medical man to grant such certificate; and if the conduct of a doctor in placing a man under treatment begets in that man a prejudicial or a revengeful feeling towards him, (the doctor who has so placed him,) this can only be because the doctor’s conduct and its conse- quences have been such as to excite such feelings in the breast of the other, be he sane or insane; and a doctor must be very much safer in having excited feelings of prejudice and revenge in the breast of a man “not in full possession of his senses,” rather than of one in whom all the powers of mind and body exist and are at work in a state of high health and perfection. So that if a doctor, by performing an act which is essentially voluntary on his part, excites such feelings as are mentioned above, and if the class he is brought in contact with in performing such act is always that mentioned in the resolution, all that can be said is, they are the safest class which could have such feelings excited in them. In your article in the Scotsman of the 16th February, and in the Caledonian Mercury of the 24th of same month, two separate views are presented of the duties and responsibilities of the medical pro- fession in granting certificates in lunacy. The resolutions of the College of Physicians also take notice of the same subject. In your own article you say,—“The persons concerned in placing and retaining a patient in an asylum are—first, the patient’s relatives; second, the certifying medical men ; thirdly, the sheriff; and lastly’ the asylurn superintendent. . . . Whether the medical certificates afford sufficient proof of insanity, the law submits to the decision of the sheriff, who, if satisfied, grants his order or warrant for the admission of the patient.” You also remark that “ a great propor- tion of insane patients [or I have no doubt your meaning is, of those for whose confinement the sheriff is asked to grant warrants] are paupers. . . . Hence in great measure arises a confident and reckless procedure which leads to the disregard of those](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21931094_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
