Legal View of Insanity Commitments.

Insanity - a Medical-legal Enigma?

There is no mental disease called insanity. Insanity is a legal term used to designate the condition of certain people who exhibit particular symptoms of mental diseases. A patient may be psychotic, but the law acts upon the assumption that he is not insane until there is a judical determination that he is. Where insanity as a defense in criminal cases is concerned, many medical men believe tha...

"Plain crazy:" lay definitions of legal insanity.

A New Conception of Legal Insanity

ions are not at all that different from the personifications of the fairy tale" (p. 75). Statements about crazy behavior that ascribe agency to intrapsychic entities such as "impulses" or "internal pressures" are homologous to statements that the insane are ruled by demons. The anthropomorphisms of the former mode of explanation are more subtle and use terms that sound mechanical and impersonal...

On Medico-Legal Evidence in Cases of Insanity

I purposely decline entering at any length into the consideration of the law of lunacy relating to dispositions of property, and the performance of the marriage contract. In the former case the proof of insanity invalidates all testamentary documents; but the courts are extremely jealous in interfering with the apparent wishes of the testator, unless clear and positive lunacy be established. Th...

No. III. On Medico-Legal Evidence in Cases of Insanity

to exaggerate the interest of the subject now under consideration? I propose to submit to your critical judgment a sketch of our high and responsible vocation as medico-legal witnesses?to suggest for adoption certain general principles of evidence, which may serve as our guide when called upon to give testimony in difficult, doubtful, and disputed cases of insanity. The position of the medical ...