Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Unsoundness of Mind, in Its Legal and Medical Consideration
We believe that a want of harmony must ever exist be tween the legal and medical doctrines of insanity in its con nection with responsibility. The two cannot be identical, and for this reason: Law demands a fixed rule - medicine admits but a general principle. What would be thought of the phy sician who undertook in the definition of any, even the simplest disease, to say, Certain symptoms must be present? His theory would lead to a series of disappointments, his practice be a continuation of blunders! Yet, law steps forward with her definition of unsoundness of mind; and, according to this definition, on which both the life and reputation of society may depend, one half mankind are mad, and half the mad are wise. Divest the mind of the body, establish a common stand ard of mind for man, and then propound a legal definition make every question of right or wrong a simple proposition in metaphysical science; with Locke investigate the principles of our knowledge, or with Reid scrutinize the principles of our minds, and, irrespective of other considerations, let every de parture from the acknowledged standard be a crime, and every crime bring its responsibility, then, and not until then, can law assume the province of the physician: while we ao knowledge the humanity of 'man, and admit that his physical organization in?uences, not only the development, but also the healthy exercise of his mind; while we recognize the ca pability of experience to establish certain relations which every power of conception founded on that experience ap proves; without much violence to language or reason we may, for all practical purposes, regard those relations as necessary, and find in their study just grounds for inductions, be they on questions of medicine or of law.
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