The courts of England and the leading authorities in the United States have never departed from this correct rule, that a man is accountable, to some extent at least, for whatever he does willingly and without the influence of delusion.
Moral insanity thus understood, as a derangement of the passions lessening a man’s full mastery of himself, but not destroying it altogether, assumes various forms. There are kleptomania, or an abnormal impulse to steal; pyromania, an impulse to set things on fire; dipsomania, or an abnormal fondness for intoxicants; nymphomania, or the tyranny of lustful passions; homicidal mania, or a craving to commit murder; etc. In all these the nature of the disease is the same, it would appear. The imagination seizes the pleasure vividly, yet, it is claimed, without delusion: and the passion, owing to organic disorder, is abnormally excitable. The organic derangement is supposed to be in the brain. For the human brain, a masterpiece of the Creator’s wisdom, is now generally believed to consist of various portions which are the organs of the passions, of motive power and the phantasms, erroneously called ideation. Hence it is easy to understand how it may happen that one portion is diseased while the other parts are in a normal condition. And on the other hand it thus appears very probable also that a brain partially diseased is liable to be soon affected in the other parts as well. Hence we may suspect that moral insanity is likely to bring on delusional insanity, and vice versa. In fact, I find that a medical expert of note, who had for many years taught that moral insanity was quite a distinct disease and separate from mental insanity, has in his old age changed his mind to some extent on this subject. “Of late years,” says Dr. Bauduy, of St. Louis, in his learned work on “Diseases of the Nervous System,” “I have believed, notwithstanding the doctrine of Pritchard, that a careful study of moral insanity will enable us to detect some evidence, although, it must be confessed, often very feeble, of mental weakening. Even the classic cases of Pritchard,” he adds, “who first defined the so-called moral insanity, when carefully examined, will confirm this statement” (p. 227). Usually, as the same Dr. Bauduy explains, those who are morally insane are at least on the high road to mental insanity (p. 228). Moral insanity is known to exist when there is a sudden change of character which can have no other source than bodily disease; as when a most honest man becomes of a sudden an habitual thief, a decent man openly profane, a miser becomes extravagantly liberal, an affectionate father a very tyrant to his children, without any traceable causes for such transformation. The disease is made more manifest if such a sudden change is preceded by certain physical conditions, such as epilepsy, hereditary taint, suicidal attempts, “the insane temperament,” as it is called, and other influences which are to be taken into consideration.
If ever you be summoned, gentlemen, to testify or pronounce on a person’s insane condition, let me give you one piece of advice which may spare you much unpleasantness: be unusually cautious of what you say. If you appear as an expert or a witness, and you make a mistake unfavorable to the patient, he will be your enemy for life; even he may at times recover damages for libel. If he is really crazy, he may be all the more dangerous. Do your duty, of course, as an honest man must always do; but do it very prudently.
Dr. Bauduy is very emphatic on the assertion that moral insanity is not moral depravity. He is perfectly right; yet we must not forget that moral depravity is often screened before the courts by the plea of insanity. When a man of bad antecedents commits a crime, and is known to have been sane just before and after the deed, he ought not to be excused on the plea that he may have been insane at the moment when he committed the act; there is no reason for such a plea. And with the victims of kleptomania, dipsomania, and other moral manias, it is well known that a sound whipping will often stop the nuisance. The rod for the juvenile offender, and the whipping-post for adults, would cure many a moral leper and be a strong protection for society at large, especially if applied before bad habits freely indulged have demoralized the person beyond the usual limits. All of us have our passions; they are an essential part of our nature and even an indispensable part. But they should be controlled by reason and will, whereas they are often indulged with guilty weakness. They are much strengthened by indulgence, especially in those predisposed to certain vices by hereditary transmission. No doubt some children have worse passions to contend against than others. It is still worse if, at the same time, their surroundings are unfavorable to virtue; and this is a constant source of increase to the criminal classes.
Wise statesmen will study the ways in which temptations to vice may be diminished; but it is mistaken mercy and dangerous to the community to spare the guilty when once they have committed criminal acts. If ever the principle were admitted in our courts of justice that the possible existence of mental insanity ought to protect a culprit from punishment, crime would soon increase tenfold both in the sane and in the insane. Both classes must be kept impressed with the conviction that the law rules supreme and will not tolerate the destruction of public safety. Your profession, gentlemen, in this matter as in many others, by its sound views on Jurisprudence and Ethics, is one of the strongest bulwarks of the common good.
LECTURE IX.
HYPNOTISM AND THE BORDER-LAND OF SCIENCE.
In this last lecture of our course I propose to make a brief excursion with you into the border-land of science, a region chiefly occupied by imposture and superstition. To show there is such a territory, we have only to name a few of its inhabitants, such as mesmerism, animal magnetism, odylism, hypnotism, mind-reading, faith-cures, clairvoyance, spiritism, including table-rapping, spirit-rapping, most of which have been used in connection with medicine. I do not maintain that all of these are mere vagaries, empty shadows, without the least reality, mere ghosts and hobgoblins, mere phantoms of the heat-oppressed brain, or cunning devices of impostors to deceive a gullible crowd of the ignorant public. Yet most of these are such beyond a doubt, and as such are totally unworthy of our attention.
Medicine is a science; it deals with undoubted facts and certain principles, and with theories in so far as they are supported by well-ascertained realities. The border-land of which I speak presents to our investigation few certain facts. It is chiefly the domain of imposture. Charlatans and showmen and medical quacks call things facts that are not facts. Among all the inhabitants of the shadowy region that I have enumerated, there is only one considered to-day by the science of medicine as worthy of its attention. It is hypnotism. As its first origin is connected with the history of mesmerism, and the latter, though itself a phantom, has been used as the chief patron of all other phantoms, I will premise a few words about mesmerism itself.
I. Mesmer was born about 1733, studied in Vienna and there became a doctor of medicine in 1766. Soon after, he began to speculate upon the curative powers of the magnet, and claimed to have discovered the existence of a force in man similar to magnetism and the source of strong influence on the human body.