It is not necessary to enter on an investigation, or to enumerate all the particular states of mind which may be comprehended under the terms Insanity, Madness or Lunacy, but it
is a subject of grave and important enquiry to ascertain what degree of mental derangement, or imbecility ought to disqualify an individual from being the master of his person and property. It has sometimes occurred that persons evidently under mental derangement have for months continued to transact their affairs with prudence, and have conducted themselves quietly in society. Notwithstanding the disordered state of their ideas, they have not obeyed the impulse, nor followed the direction of their insane opinions, and have forborn to act to their own detriment or to the annoyance of others. Several of such instances have fallen under my own observation: but the greater part have eventually destroyed themselves, or become so furious that seclusion was absolutely necessary. It is therefore impossible, under a state of existing insanity to predict the future conduct of an individual thus affected, or to become
responsible for the continuance of his harmless disposition.
In the discussion of this question it should be kept in view that the medical evidence is called upon to state, in the first place, that the person is of insane mind: and secondly, that in consequence of such state, he is incapable of conducting himself or of managing his affairs. If it be a matter of general and legitimate inference, that a person of insane mind is consequently unable to the management of himself and affairs; the proof of his insanity necessarily involves his incompetency: if it be supposed that, although of insane mind, a man may be capable of conducting himself and his affairs, it is then incumbent on the medical practitioner to shew from the nature and tendency of his particular insanity that he is unfit to be trusted with either. Such prediction must necessarily be the result
of copious experience, and formed in the way of a general conclusion, and it should be understood that this opinion of his incompetency regards his existing condition of mind at the time of the legal enquiry. Although a person might labour under a variety of mental infirmities, which by medical practitioners might be technically denominated false perception, delusion, hallucination, &c. still if these symptoms did not go to the extent of disqualifying him from conducting himself and managing his affairs, such symptoms in a legal point of view would, probably, not amount to insanity, nor justify the restraint of a commission of lunacy. It is true such symptoms seldom occur without producing the incompetency which the law regards as the warrant for its restraint, and fulfils the legal interpretation of insanity.
The employment of terms in an ambiguous
sense has ever been the bane of philosophy, and the obstacle to its advancement. Without the meaning of important words be accurately defined, no general reasoning can be established. On some occasions the term UNSOUND MIND has been introduced, and considerable emphasis has been laid on it by lawyers; as possessing an intrinsic meaning, and designating a peculiar state of morbid intellect, not precisely similar to insanity, but of equivalent effect in depriving a person of the management of himself and affairs. It is of the utmost importance that the term unsound mind should be fully and accurately considered. Had this term originated from medical persons, it is most probable they would, at least have endeavoured to explain it; but it is of higher descent, and adopted by those luminaries of the law to whom we look up with confidence and respect. The force and extent of the term unsound mind
are described in the luminous judgment of the present Chancellor on a recent case. Of this learned exposition of the law, every medical practitioner should be informed, as it will serve to guide him, when he is called to give his deposition on the state of a patient’s intellect. In the judgment adverted to, his Lordship observes, “I have searched, and caused a most careful search to be made into all the records and procedures on lunacy which are extant. I believe, and I think I may venture to say, that originally commissions of this sort were of two kinds, a commission aiming at, and enquiring, whether the individual had been an ideot ex nativitate, or whether, on the other hand, he was a lunatic. The question whether he was a lunatic, being a question, admitting in the solution of it, of a decision that imputed to him at one time, an extremely sound mind, but at other times an occurrence of
insanity, with reference to which, it was necessary to guard his person and his property by a commission issuing. It seems to have been a very long time before those who had the administration of justice in this department, thought themselves at liberty to issue a commission, when the person was represented as not being ideot ex nativitate, as not being lunatic, but as being of unsound mind, importing by those words, the notion, that the party was in some such state, as was to be contradistinguished from idiotcy, and as he was to be contradistinguished from lunacy, and yet such as made him a proper object of a commission in the nature of a commission to enquire of idiotcy, or a commission to enquire of lunacy. From the moment that that had been established, down to this moment, it appears to me however to have been at the same time established, that whatever may
be the degree of weakness or imbecility of the party—whatever may be the degree of incapacity of the party to manage his own affairs, if the finding of the jury is only, that he was of an extreme imbecility of mind, that he has an inability to manage his own affairs; if they will not proceed to infer from that, in their finding upon oath, that he is of unsound mind, they have not established by the result of the enquiry, a case upon which the Chancellor can make a grant, constituting a committee either of the person or estate. All the cases decide that mere imbecility will not do; that an inability to manage a man’s affairs will not do, unless that inability and that incapacity to manage his affairs amount to evidence that he is of unsound mind; and he must be found to be so. Now there is a great difference between inability to manage a man’s affairs, and imbecility of mind taken