Medical Jurisprudence as it Relates to Insanity, According to the Law of England

Transcriber's Notes:
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By JOHN HASLAM, M.D. LATE OF PEMBROKE HALL, CAMBRIDGE. FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL MEDICAL, NATURAL HISTORY AND CHEMICAL SOCIETIES OF EDINBURGH.
London: PRINTED FOR C. HUNTER, LAW BOOKSELLER, BELL YARD; J. HUNTER, ST. PAUL’S CHURCH YARD; AND TAYLOR AND HESSEY, FLEET STREET.
1817.

The consideration, that in our own language, no work existed on the subject of Medical Jurisprudence, as it relates solely to Insanity, urged me to the present performance. Previously to this undertaking manifold impediments were foreseen, and these difficulties have augmented in every page of its progress:—the apprehensions from this arduous attempt, have, however, been mitigated by the consoling reflection, that in a novel enterprize criticism would be tempered with candour.

advocate; who might thereby become enabled to adapt the facts in nature to the scale of justice. Furnished with such information, he will be instructed to institute appropriate enquiries for the discovery of truth, and to ascertain what is the duty of the medical evidence to supply:—so that he may not be pressed beyond his resources, nor the depths of his intelligence be left unsounded. On the practitioner of my own profession I have ventured to impress the importance and moral obligation of his evidence before the tribunal of justice, and to enforce, that the value of medical opinion becomes enhanced by perspicuity of conveyance, and derives authority from the exposure of its foundations. It has likewise been my object, to direct his attention to those leading points which usually constitute the subjects of his deposition, or are presented for his solution during the course of legal examination.

The technical language of the learned professions is commonly inveloped in mysterious obscurity:—persons for the most part acquire names without investigating their force and legitimate import; and currently employ them rather from habit than comprehension: it has therefore been my anxious endeavour to scrutinize words of important meaning; and to convey the manifestations of mind and the symptoms of disease, by expressions generally understood, and emancipated from the thraldom of professional nomenclature.