Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/627

 who have reached adult life are experts. It is, with all of us, the daily practice of our lives to observe and study men's conduct and motives, and we are quick to discover the smallest evidence of mental unsoundness, especially in those with whom we have intimate personal acquaintance. Indeed, in most cases the mental alienation is suspected, or well known, long before the case is brought under the notice of the alienist.

It is not the same, however, in reference to most other subjects in which the services of experts are demanded. It is not so in most matters pertaining to either science, art, commerce, or the general business of life; in all of which the average citizen is presumably without experience or knowledge, and without the aid of the expert he could not intelligently perform the duties of a judge or of a juror.

If the question involved were one of mineral or vegetable poisoning, the trial of the case without the assistance of a practical chemist would deservedly expose the court and the law to public contempt.

If, again, it were a question whether the neck of the thigh-bone had been broken within or without the capsule, involving, as this question does, in a great measure, the degree of permanent injury which the patient has sustained, without the aid of an experienced surgeon it would be impossible to place the case fairly before a jury, not one of whom, probably, had ever seen either accident, or knew that they were not identical.

Finally, there is reason to fear that in one direction professed alienists are more liable to err than most other men of learning and experience, but who have not confined their studies so exclusively to the specialty of mental diseases.

It is a fact of common observation that, in all departments of medical science, the specialists to whom our science is indebted for some of its most important improvements and discoveries, are inclined to extend the range or number of diseases and of sympathies referable to the organs of whose lesions they have made a special study. This they do conscientiously, sometimes wisely and sometimes unwisely—their errors being exposed when some other specialist traces the functional disturbance to a lesion of some other organ, or the general practitioner demonstrates that all or nearly all the organs of the body are suffering from a general dyscrasy, and that the lesion of no one in particular can fairly be held responsible for the particular symptoms in reference to the cause and treatment of which the specialist is consulted.

Alienists need to be reminded that they have shown the same tendency to increase the number of diseases under the title of insanity, and to widen the range of their specialty, by including a great many eccentricities and moral obliquities under this title; and that by so doing they have virtually relieved the subjects of these peculiarities