The necessity for some legalised arrangements for the treatment of dipsomania, or the drinking insanity / by Alexander Peddie.

  • Peddie, Alexander, 1810-1907
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The necessity for some legalised arrangements for the treatment of dipsomania, or the drinking insanity / by Alexander Peddie. 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.

    12/40 (page 10)
    liarinony with the natural teinj)ei- and disposition of the indi\'idual in otlier respects. I cannot lielp thinking that the antagonism of lawyers to physi- cians in regard to definitions of insanity would undergo some change, if the former had an opportunity of studying, even for a brief period, the varied ])henomena of mental diseases occurring within the walls of a lunatic asylum. They would then be convinced of the real existence of the endless phases of insanity, and the great variety of its causes and complications. They would then, I doubt not; be con- vinced of the impropriety of framing and adhering to arbitrary de- finitions, and of the necessity of considering each case by its own ])eculiar features and circumstances ; and be disposed to listen with more deference to the opinions of experienced and observant physi- cians, ceasing to characterise them as fantastic and shadowy, inconsistent and unsatisfactory. Besides, difficidties in coming to a wise and just decision in many cases which come under judicial examination would be more easily disposed of, were asylums for the insane viewed as places not merely for confinement and restraint but for protection and cure. In penal legislation, Government, now-a-da}'S, considers not merely the punish- ment of the offender, but, to a great extent, his reformation, and the good of society resulting from both ; and, although the analogy in many respects will not hold good, yet in medico-legal arrange- ments for the insane, cases of serious mental and moral perversion, which interfere with private and public safety and well-being, ought to be disposed of with the twofold design of protection and cm-e. But to return to the more immediate subject under consideration, what has been already stated as the law of England under the statute of 1845 applies equally to that of Scotland, which has hitherto been even more rigid in its requirements, although the terms of the Act of 1857 give some ground to hope for more liberality of construc- tion. By its ancient phraseology, repeated in the Act, June 1841, and acted on to the present day, the only objects indi- cated as proper for restraint are the fui-ious, fatuous, or lunatic. The remedy employed in cases, in which mental infirmity or dis- order exists in a smaller degree than is supposed to be implied by any of these terms, is either interdiction—the execution of a writ interdicting the spendthrift from alienating his property, and the lieges fi-om transacting with him—or curatorsJtip, the exercise of the nohile ojicium, as lawyers call it, of the Com't