A rational materialistic definition of insanity and imbecility : with the medical jurisprudence of legal criminality, founded upon physiological, psychological and clinical observations / Henry Howard.

  • Howard, Henry, 1815-1887.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A rational materialistic definition of insanity and imbecility : with the medical jurisprudence of legal criminality, founded upon physiological, psychological and clinical observations / Henry Howard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    11/156 (page 7)
    CHAPT] Insanity ? The Chicago Medical Review^ Vol. V., page (i^^^ makes the following statement: Dr. Howard, like Dr. Nichols and others of the more scientific members of the Asylum Association, holds that imbecility is a result of teratological defects insanity a result of pathological defect; they therefore classify the primary monor mania of the Germans with imbeciles as imbecility of the fiirst grade^ both being equally insane in the sense of the law. This is a correct statement of the views I hold. But while hold- ing these views I maintain that the teratological defect of the imbecile or idiot does not exempt them from pathological defect also. Conse- quently, we have imbeciles, who in the eye of the law are already insane, suffering like other men from pathological defect; which renders them insane from a pathological standpoint. Therefore^, when I speak of the imbecile as an irresponsible creature in the eye of the law, because of his teratological defect, I do not thereby mean', that he is necessarily insane according to my idea of insanity. I con- ceive insanity to be altogether due to pathological change in the mental organization,—to be a purely physical disease from which no man is exempt, although some, particularly those of an epileptic or hysterical neurosis, are more disposed to the disease than others. Every man is either an idiot, an imbecile, or an intellectual man—im-^ becility and intellectuality differing in degree. The idiot and imbecile are such because their mental organization have not attained their full development,—teratological defect. An ordinary intellectual man is such because his mental organization has attained near tO' its full development. There are, of course, diiferent degrees of imbecility, as there are different degrees of intellectuality, all depen- dent upon the different degrees of development of the mental organ- ization. Then, again, every man is either sane or insane, because, in every man's mental organization there is, or is not, pathological defect. The distinction I would make between the idiot and imbe- cile is that the idiot is born with a deformed imperfect brain, whereas; the imbecile is one whose brain from childhood never became fully