Notwithstanding the medical evidence may be incapable, totidem verbis, to give a clear
definition of madness, so as to be suited to the conception of all persons, and to comprehend the various shapes of this disease, on account of the various notions affixed by different persons to the abstract terms he may employ; yet it is always in his power to state such perversions of thought—such projects—and such conduct, contradistinguished from that which all men hold to be rational, as shall leave no doubt on the minds of those who are to appreciate his evidence, that insanity exists: and if the person be really insane, it must be from the ignorance or neglect of the medical practitioner, if he do not satisfactorily establish his derangement, provided his opportunities of visiting and conversing with the patient have been sufficient.
In those cases where insane persons have deliberately destroyed others there has been some existing and prominent delusion which
has been fully believed to be True and Good and Right, which has constituted the motive, and urged on the miserable victim of this delusion to the accomplishment of his purpose. Lord Erskine in the fewest words has most impressively comprehended this subject, “In cases of atrocity, the relation between the disease and the act should be apparent.” And again, “I think as a doctrine of law, the delusion and the act should be connected.” With the lunatic the object to be attained has seldom been adequate to the hazard of the enterprize, nor has the motive been proportionate to the violence committed: in the majority of instances some previous intimation of the intended attack has been communicated, if the object has been accessible; and the warning itself has usually borne the stamp of a deranged intellect. These distempered minds have never inflicted violence for private emolument, or personal
advancement, but have been persuaded, that they are selected from the mass of mankind to confer exemplary justice, and to ameliorate the condition of their species. The motive for the injury inflicted has generally been virtuous and honorable in the deluded imagination of the maniac. It is true that on most occasions there has been the utmost subtilty of contrivance and deliberate execution of the projected mischief, whether it has been directed against others, or exerted for their own destruction. The execution of the project so far from being unwise, has usually deceived and astonished the wisest; but the principle, the firm belief, the motive to action, has been the “stuff which dreams are made of.”
There is another form of this disorder under the influence of which some insane persons become highly dangerous; but which
has not been hitherto sufficiently noticed, although it deserves the fullest consideration. As several instances of this state have fallen under my own observation I shall beg to relate two or three cases with as much brevity as may adequately suffice to convey the facts. It has been already remarked that some insane persons who have recovered the proper direction of their intellects have thoroughly remembered the particulars of their diseased state:—in the instances to be related they have retained no trace of their disorder, nor any of the circumstances which occurred during its continuance.
A very powerful man, above the ordinary stature, who in his youth had been subject to epileptic attacks, and frequently to intervals of sullen abstraction, which increased after the epileptic fits had subsided, became suddenly furious, and during the transports
of his disorder destroyed two children and a woman. For this act there appeared to be no motive. He was ordered to be confined, where he continued until his death. For many years during his seclusion I had constant opportunities of seeing and conversing with him. He was ordinarily in a very tranquil state, and did not discourse irrationally;—indeed there was no particular subject on which his mind appeared to be disarranged, nor were there any persons against whom he entertained an aversion. Much of his time was passed in reading, which he said afforded him great consolation. On many occasions I endeavoured to draw from him some account of the motives which induced him to destroy the persons above-mentioned; but he uniformly and steadily persisted that he had no recollection whatever of such occurrence. He said, he understood he had done something which was very
wicked, and for which he was confined; and which he had no doubt was true, from the respectability of the persons who informed him of his crime; but he thanked God he had no more memory of what had passed than if it had been committed in his sleep.—During the years of his confinement he had many furious paroxysms, and in order to be fully satisfied of the truth of his asseverations as to his want of recollection during these attacks, he was once blooded at the commencement of the paroxysm, although with considerable difficulty, and on another occasion cupped when its violence was subsiding,—yet when he was restored to his ordinary state of tranquility he neither recollected the persons who were present nor the operations which had been performed.—Of the same class of mental affection was the case of a young lady, who became insane in consequence of having experienced some severe