Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/524

 Cliaptcrs in tJie Rnglish Law of Lunacy. sentiment, Pour être utile aux alienes il faut les aimer beaucoup et savoir se dévouer pour eux" in an age when the fame vinculis plagis coercendiis est of Celsus was still the accred ited regimen in asylums for the insane, at first denied that in cases of moral insanity the intel lectual faculties of the patient are un disturbed, but soon afterwards — one cannot doubt to some extent under the pressure of hostile criticism — accepted Pinel's theory in its en tirety. Marc, Pagan, Prichard, Ray and Conolly were equally firm — and so the con troversy stood till after the middle of the present cen tury. Then a reaction с о m menced. Trélab, Du Saulle and other continental writers began to insist that deepseated intellectual lesion underlay all these cases of sup posed moral in JOSEPH sanity. Dr. Al THE PINEL fred Swaine Tay lor, the prince of British medical jurists followed suit with equal force and moderation. ' It does not seem probable," he said, that moral insanity as thus defined" (i. e. as lesion of the moral, with out any injury to the intellectual, faculties), "ever exists or can exist in any person. The mental powers are rarely disordered

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without the moral feelings partaking of this disorder, and conversely it is not to be expected that the moral feelings should be come to any extent perverted without the intellect being affected, for perversion of moral feeling is generally observed to be one of the early symptoms of disordered reason. T h e intellectual disturbance may sometimes be diffi cult of detection, but in every case of true insanity it is more or less present and it would be a highly dangerous practice to pronounce a person insane when some evi dence of its exist ence was not forth coming. . . Until medical men can produce a clear and well-defined distinction be tween moral de pravity and moral insanity, such a doctrine, em ployed as it has been for the excul pation of persons GUISLA1N, charged with OF BELGIUM crime, should be rejected as inadmissible." At the same time, Sir James Stephen was engaged in attacking the legal doctrine laid down, as we have seen, after the acquittal of Macnaghten in 1843, which made the re sponsibility of a person, alleged to be insane, for a crime, depend on whether he knew its nature and quality at the time of committing