Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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    inquiry. With a better knowledge of crime, we ma}' not come to the i)ractice of treating criminals as we now treat insane persons, but it is probable that we shall come to other and more tolerant sentiments, and that a lesa hostile feeling towards them, derived from a better know- ledge of defective organization, will beget an indulgence at any rate towards all doubtful cases inhabiting the borderland between insanity and crime ; in like manner as within living memory the feelings of mankind with regard to the insane have been entirely revolutionized by an inductive method of study. There are advantages in recognizing a just ])rincipU even when events are not ripe enough for its application, when it looks Utopian and excites the derision oi practical men; for it slowly modifies feelings and ideas. acts as a solvent of prejudices, and, notwithstanding seemingly insuperable difficulties, tends by hardl}* perceptible degrees to its realization in action. The sincere recognition of it is, as it were, a prophecy which finally brings about its own fulfilment: the Utopian idea of one age becoming often the common-place idea of a succeeding age. NOTE. The following account is quoted by Casaubon in his Treatise concerning Enthusiasm from Josephus Acosta. I append it as a striking illustra- tion of the M^ay in which madness was sometimes innocently dealt with in the days of Acosta : — There was (saith Acosta) in this very Kingdorae of Peru (where himself was once Prsepositus Generalis), a man of great esteem in those dayes, a learned Divine aud Professor \or Doctor) of Divinity. The same also accounted religious and orthodox : yea in a manner, the oracle, for his time, of this other world (America). Thia man being grown familiar with a certain muliercula (or, plain woman), which as another Philumena or Maxinnlla that Moatauus carried about.