Insanity and crime : a medico-legal commentary on the case of George Victor Townley / by the editors of the "Journal of mental science".

  • C. Lockhart Robertson
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity and crime : a medico-legal commentary on the case of George Victor Townley / by the editors of the "Journal of mental science". Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    the psychopathic physician in these cases; and that the very fact of his being called] either 'for the Crown' or 'for the defence' renders it impossible for him to hold an impartial position; that if the cross-examination is often damaging to his character for exactitude in scientific knowledge, it is not less damaging to that of the Court itself as an institution whose pm-pose is to elicit truth and administer justice. The remedy is an obvious one; it is to make the medical mtnesses in matters of science, witnesses not for the pro- secution or the defence, but witnesses called by the Court itself Then would their evidence be freed from all sus- picion of advocacy, and gain the authority in which it is now wanting. In France, when a criminal is suspected to be insane, the Court appoints a commission of medical men, or selects one man experienced in mental diseases, to exa- mine into the case, and to report upon it; the whole life of the prisoner and the present symptoms are investigated, and the questions put and the answers to them are recorded for the information of the Court. The French system, which places the scientific expert before the Court in an inde- pendent and impartial position, and afi'ords him an ample opportunity to form a decided and trustworthy opinion, appears to be in every way worthy of imitation.* Such an alteration would not be any novelty in England; for in difficult questions of collisions on the sea and of salvage, where special knowledge is required, the Masters of the Trinity Company are called in to assist the Admiralty Court. And surely a shipwreck or a collision at sea is a fact much more within the knowledge of ordinary men than the diagnosis of cerebral disease where lunacy exists. By the adoption of some such plan, the Court would secure im- partial and trustworthy evidence, on which it could act as might seem to it good, and the poor man would obtain that equality with the rich before the law which it is the boast of England to give him, but which he practically has not at present when insanity is pleaded. * Unsonndness of Mind in Relation to Criminal Acts. An Essay by J. C. Bucknill, M.D, Second Edition.