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day was wasted, and the prosecutor, by the most affecting history of unmerited suffering, appeared to the judge and jury, and to a humane English audience, as the victim of the most wanton and barbarous oppression; at last Dr. Sims came into Court, who had been prevented from an earlier attendance. From Dr. Sims, the able advocate ascertained that the very man, whom he had been above an hour examining, believed himself to be the Lord and Saviour of mankind; not merely at the time of his confinement, which was alone necessary for his defence, but during the whole time that he had been triumphing over every attempt to surprise him in the concealment of his disease. His Lordship then affected to lament the indecency of his ignorant examination, when the lunatic expressed his forgiveness, and exclaimed, with the utmost gravity and emphasis, in the face of the whole Court, "I am the Christ:" and so the cause ended.

Wood's case, before Lord Mansfield, and related upon his authority, is still more extraordinary. Wood twice indicted Dr. Munro for false imprisonment in a madhouse, when, as Wood stated, he was sane. On the first trial, though not till after a long cross-examination without success, yet, on the clue being furnished by Dr. Battie, his insanity became apparent. The subject of the delusion was the imagination of corresponding in cherry juice with a princess; that having been imprisoned in a high tower, and being debarred the use of ink, he had no other means of correspondence but by writing his letters in cherry juice, and throwing them into the river which surrounded the tower, where the princess received them in a boat. There existed, of course, no tower, no imprisonment, no writing in cherry juice, no river, no boat; but the whole was the inveterate phantom of a morbid imagination. Wood again indicted Dr. Munro, knowing that he had lost his former cause by speaking of the princess; and such, said Lord Mansfield, is the extraordinary subtlety and cunning of madmen, that, when he was cross-examined on the trial in London, as he had successfully been before, in order to expose his madness, all the ingenuity of the bar, and all the authority of the

Court, could not make him say a single syllable upon that topic, which had put an end to the indictment before; although he still had the same indelible impression upon his mind, as he signified to those who were near him; but, conscious that the delusion had occasioned his defeat at Westminster, he obstinately persisted in holding it back (k).

"Cases of this kind, (observes Dr. Conolly), are quoted in medical books, to shew the difficulty of proving insanity, but they shew us something more. For, where the difficulty of eliciting a proof of a disordered mind is so great, where the disorder is so limited and so seldom evinced, what possible right can any one have to interfere with, or to imprison any man so afflicted? Assuredly no more right than to imprison a man for being short sighted, or a little lame of one leg. Unless the man, mentioned by Lord Erskine, was disposed, in consequence of his belief in the real presence of the Saviour, to inflict injury on any one or on himself, or unless it led him to neglect his affairs and his family, those who confined him were justly indicted for false imprisonment, and ought to have been punished. An unfortunate gentleman fancies that a princess is in love with him—a very harmless fancy in itself; he wanders about the woods, or spends his romantic days on the banks of a river, and meditates on his passion-surely he might spend his time less innocently than this! He carves the name of his beloved on trees; he indites moving letters to her in cherry juice. He fancies himself debarred from seeing the face he adores, and thinks that he is a prisoner in some high tower which overlooks the flood-fancies foolish enough, but certainly not very dangerous! He commits his letter to the guardianship of the river, and bids the waters 'flow on,' and, ere they reach the sea, convey his written words to the bower of his misThere is nothing very criminal in all this. But the poor man has money, and relations who want it. Instead, therefore, of being allowed to become tired of his fancies, which he would be in time, he is waylaid, forcibly seized, carried off to a private madhouse, and inclosed within some

tress.

(k) 27 Vol. Howell's St. Tr. 1316.

dismal yard, with none but lunatics for his companions, By some rare accident, an opportunity is given of investigating his real state in a Court of law. Irritated, harassed, vexed, and perhaps of a disposition to shrink from publicity of every kind, every artifice of cultivated and practised minds is exerted to confuse him, and to make him contradict himself; the most dexterous questions, the most artful insinuations are by turns levelled at him. And all in vain; the poor man is simple enough, but shews no madness. At last comes forth some hired wretch who has watched him in his days of idle wandering, observed all his movements, and dogged his path for evidence; and because the suspected man will not abandon his princess, or does not deny the affair of the cherry juice, there arises a sound of triumph among his relatives; learned men felicitate themselves on having discovered what was so difficult to detect; the cause is ended, and the foolish lover is deprived of his property and of his liberty, and sent back to his horrible imprisonment" (1).

7. Persons partially insane are usually, not to say always, in a high degree eccentric in their general conduct. Hence it is, that great general eccentricity, as the common co-incident, being proved, assists materially in the proof of partial insanity, where partial insanity is suspected to exist. For as persons actually insane in some particulars are commonly highly eccentric in many or most; so persons highly eccentric in many or most particulars, are, at least not unfrequently, actually insane in some. People who dwell on the confines of two empires, are likely enough to be found sometimes in the one, and sometimes in the other-and they are the more likely to be so found, when the line of demarcation between the two is under an indefinite and uncertain something, a sort of mist, which renders a transition from the one to the other side of it easy and almost imperceptible-which must always be the case in respect of that actual (though invisible) line of demarcation, (for some such

(1) See an Inquiry concerning the Indications of Insanity by Dr.

Conolly, p. 384.

there must needs be), between mere eccentricity, situate on the one side, and downright insanity, being upon the other; in short, it is next to impossible, in such a case, to be constantly touching upon the line, without ever going beyond it (m). But eccentricity of character, severity and violence arising from natural temper and passion, do not necessarily prove derangement. In our inquiries upon this subject, it is necessary to be cautious not to confound insanity with mere eccentricity: upon the latter subject the following remarks of Dr Gooch (n) deserve particular attention. "In considering insanity as an object of legal medicine, it often becomes a question, and sometimes a puzzling one, whether the peculiarity in the mind of the person who is the subject of investigation does or does not constitute unsoundness of mind? On these occasions it is often said, that the peculiarity is not madness, but eccentricity. To form a proper opinion on this question, it is necessary to have an accurate conception, not only of what we mean by the word insanity, but also of what we mean by the word eccentricity."

Now, the persons who have passed for eccentric, and whom the author last cited has had opportunities of observing, he divides into three classes.

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First, those who differ from the rest of mankind, chiefly in their objects and pursuits. Instead of desiring and aiming at the common objects of human wishes, namely, rising in life, the attainment of a competence, the acquisition of wealth and power, they are contented in these respects to remain stationary, and they dedicate the whole of their time and talent to the cultivation of their mind, and the acquisition of knowledge. This peculiarity of pursuit, unless counteracted by much intercourse with polished society, generates various peculiarities in their appearance, habits, manners, and modes of expression; they are careless, often slovenly in their dress, awkward in their manners, singular, and often pedantic in the topics and language of their conversation. Such persons are called eccentric, but their eccentricity consists only in their pursuits and manners; it is the

(m) 3 Add. 182.

(n) Account of the Diseases peculiar to Women, 189–192.

simplest and most unquestionable form of eccentricity, and is compatible with the healthiest, happiest, and most vigorous state of mind.

The second class consists of persons who differ from the rest of mankind in the singularity of their opinions. With the same materials they draw inferences widely different from those of sensible and competent judges; they are persons of great confidence in their own judgment, defective either in knowledge or in comprehensiveness of mind, and by separating those facts which are favourable to their opinions, by frequent meditation on them, and by keeping out of sight the opposite facts, they at length attain the firmest conviction of their peculiar notions. This process will sometimes carry a man a great way. There is at this time in America, a Captain Symes, who is convinced that the earth is perforated from pole to pole, that the sea flows through, and that the perforation is navigable; and he is said to be planning a voyage to explore it. This form of eccentricity, in a minor degree, is very common; the persons subject to it are often clever and zealous, but they never possess very superior minds; they have zeal for knowledge, without corresponding sagacity; still they are eccentric, not mad, for they arrive at their conclusions through an intellectual process, though a crooked one. It is a law of the human understanding, that a little evidence perpetually presented to the mind will produce as much conviction as a greater quantity presented rarely.

There is still another class of persons who are called eccentric. Those observed by Dr. Gooch have been remarkable for a high opinion of themselves, quite disproportionate to their apparent powers or actual achievements, for rashness of conduct never corrected by experience; some of them have had singularly calm and sweet dispositions; others have been of stormy tempers, subject to violent gusts of passion from trifling provocations; they have had opinions without any intelligible reasons for them, and have most of them had a peculiarly formal and solemn manner. After continuing many years in this state, and passing among their friends for eccentric characters, they have ultimately become

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