as evidence of unsoundness of mind. The case of Charlton Palmer in which this was very much discussed, was the case of a man stricken in years, and whose mind, was the mind of a child, it was therefore in that sense, imbecility and inability to manage his affairs which constituted unsoundness of mind.” This is the law, the principle established for the regulation of medical opinion; and it will be immediately perceived, that the burthen of this ponderous machine, turns on the explanation which may be given to the term unsoundness of mind. As far as the term unsound is employed and understood by medical persons, it signifies a morbid condition of the human constitution, or a morbid state of some particular organ, and this state of unsoundness is inferred to exist from particular and well marked symptoms, which experience has detected to indicate, constitutional or local morbid affections. If this term be
transferred to mind, it is equally incumbent on the person who employs it, to point out the particular symptoms or mental phenomena which characterize this unsoundness of the individual’s mind. It ought to be well considered that our knowledge of the intellectual faculties, and of their operations is very limited, and that the progress of the philosophy of mind, has borne no proportion to the rapid advances which have been made by Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology, in the structure, offices and morbid alterations of the body. All that we can know of the mind of an individual is from the communication of his ideas in terms or signs which are conventional between us, in order to be intelligible, or from his actions. Thus by discourse, which is imparted to the ear, or by intelligible characters presented to the eye, which convey his thoughts, and by his conduct, we are enabled to estimate the character of his mind. The
lawyer has been accustomed to receive mental phenomena as the only evidences of the state of an individual’s intellect: he would be dissatisfied, and in my own opinion, properly, with any bodily symptoms, such as peculiar conformation of the head, excessive determination of blood thereto, protrusion or glistening of the eye, increased pulsation of the Carotid arteries, &c.—these may be indications to medical persons in the treatment of insanity, but they do not constitute any direct evidences of mind. On the scale of intellectual capacity there is an extensive range, some are eminently gifted, and others so sparingly supplied that they are unfit for the common purposes of life, and require to be protected. These are Ideots ex Nativitate. If it be attempted to teach them, they are deficient of the capacity to acquire sufficient to manage the property they may be possessed of, or to conduct themselves. Is it here incumbent on the
medical practitioner to state that this natural deficiency of intellect arises from unsoundness of mind, or that the unsoundness is the effect of such deficiency: in order that the individual may experience the wise, politic, and humane protection of the law?—It frequently occurs that those of extensive capacity and high attainments are by an apoplectic or paralytic attack suddenly deprived of their intellectual faculties, and reduced to the state of an ideot ex nativitate. Is it in this case necessary, for the legal protection of the party, to insist on the hypothesis of unsoundness? Is it insufficient to detail the miserable remnants of his former state, and exhibit to the jury the shocking spectacle? Must there be a compulsion to infer, that this abolition of the faculties amounts to evidence of the unsoundness of his mind? We are acquainted with the mind from the phœnomena it displays; but the cause of these phœnomena is
to us inscrutable: by discourse and conduct we infer its soundness, by the same evidences its unsoundness must be detected. This appears however to militate against the dictum of law, which states, “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 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 their enquiry, a case, upon which the Chancellor can make a grant constituting a committee either of the person or estate.” Is not this extreme imbecility of mind and inability to manage his affairs the only evidence of his unsoundness of mind? if not, what further is
required? for it is not necessary, according to law, that he should be a lunatic. If these be insufficient to constitute him of unsound mind, then the inference is clear and warranted, that he may be of extreme imbecility, and have an inability to manage his affairs, and, notwithstanding all this, may be of sound mind: and if unsoundness, be some such state, as may be contradistinguished from idiotcy and lunacy, then an ideot and a lunatic may be of sound mind.
In the case referred to of Charlton Palmer, who was a man stricken in years, and “whose mind was the mind of a child, it was therefore in that sense imbecility and inability to manage his affairs, which constituted unsoundness of mind.” Here the imbecility and inability to manage, did constitute the unsoundness: the words therefore, in that sense, evidently refer to his mind being “the
mind of a child,” which is perhaps a mode of expression more familiar than accurate; as no one could properly infer, that the mind of a child was necessarily unsound.
If the word unsoundness be particularly examined, and for that purpose we consult Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, we shall find it employed in three different senses, but no one in which it implies any particular condition of mind:—the adjective unsound has a dozen different meanings, but none in the sense of vitiated intellect. From authority therefore we obtain no information. If we proceed to its derivation, we shall find that our Anglosaxon ancestors by the word SUND (whence our SOUND) meant precisely the Latin SANUS. Unsund Anglosaxon, or unsound English, would therefore be of equivalent meaning with the Latin INSANUS.