beware of him, for he felt he must be at their throats.' Dwas perfectly aware of the painful nature of his posi tion, mourned over his insanity, and especially over his homicidal desires, which he stated that he only experienced in paroxysms. These paroxysms were very frequent when he was first placed under observation, but gradually diminished in number. He at first conversed freely about his homicidal tendencies, and the uncontrollable inclination which he felt to tear his clothes and break windows, but as he improved, and as these past away, he appeared ashamed of them, and ultimately repudiated [173] them altogether. When he did speak of them, he declared that they were quite inexplicable to him, and that they had no connection which he could discover with his desponding state of mind."

A case has come under our own notice. It was that of a woman whose insanity was indicated simply by an insane desire to throw her children into the fire. Her husband had been unfaithful to her and to his marriage vows, and that circumstance brought on mental depression. So horrible was the temptation, so persistently did it tyrannize over her, and so powerful did it become, that she was unwilling to trust to her own power to resist, and placed herself in a lunatic asylum. In this case, the homicidal impulse was accompanied with a desire to do herself an injury. She disliked seeing a knife, as it tempted her to commit suicide. She had prayed to be freed from these temptations. Such a temptation seems to warrant the name that has been given to them, of "reflex motives." The facility seems to make the desire. There is a reciprocity betwixt matter and spirit.2

3

M. H——3 was admitted into the West Riding Asylum upon the 12th December, 1867. The medical man who signed the certificate observed that she was constantly stupefied or muddled, that she was occasionally vicious, that she assured him

Journal of Mental Science, vol. ix., p. 208.

An interesting case of homicidal insanity is given by Dr. Lockhart Robertson in the Journal of Mental Science for July, 1860. See also Psychological Journal, vol. iii., pp. 49, 51, 465, and vol. iv., p. 560; and Rex v. Brixey, Med. Gazette, vol. xxxvi., pp. 166, 247; Reg. v. Stowell, Med. Gazette, vol. xlvii., p. 569; and Journal of Mental Science, vol. xiii., p. 548.

For the two cases which follow I am indebted to the kindness which placed the Case-Books of the West Riding Asylum at my disposal.

she had a desire to murder her boy, and that when that feeling came over her she found it almost impossible to restrain herself. She was forty-nine years of age, she had been in the workhouse, and the insanity had continued eight days before her admission. When she became an inmate of the asylum, she had a delusion of hearing. She heard a voice, and believed it was the voice of the Devil. The voice urged her to destroy her son as Samson destroyed the lion. There was no other symptom of insanity. She upon one occasion manifested a tendency to excitement, and that was after having had an interview with her husband and children. On the 11th of April, 1868, her bodily health was improved, and there [174] was decided improvement of her mental condition. She no longer heard the voice, and had ceased to fear that she might be impelled to do some criminal act. She subsequently became industrious and cheerful, and expressed a wish to return home. She was discharged upon the 29th of April, 1869.

P. S was twenty-nine years of age, and a Jewess. She was admitted into the West Riding Asylum upon the 12th day of June, 1869. The medical man who signed the certificate stated that he had observed despondency; that her friends informed him of the fact that she was sleepless and rambled about during the night, and she confessed that she was constantly tempted to destroy her children. She had been confined about four months previous to her admission. Her recovery had been rapid up to the eleventh day after the confinement, when she ate some cabbage, which brought on diarrhoea, from which she has suffered at intervals since that time. The history of this case seems to be that, while she was in bed, a neighbor came to see her, and told her about a story she had seen in a newspaper of a woman who had burned. her child. From that time forth she suffered, at intervals, from an insane impulse to destroy her youngest child by pulling out its tongue with her hands, and after a time the same desire influenced her with regard to all her other children. She gave a reason for the peculiar form of the infanticide meditated. She said that she had once known a man with a bad tongue which had to be operated on, and it was that circumstance which gave her the idea of pulling out her

children's tongues. At the time of the impulse she was quite clear as regarded other things, was conscious of all that was going on around her, and, with this exception, was perfectly calm and sane. She complained of headache and numbness in the head, and when she had the murderous tendency she suffered from pain and palpitation of the heart. She also assured those about her that she had disagreeable dreams, and often thought that she was going to be hanged: she was also nervous: at one time was liable to illusions of sight, but she never thoroughly believed in them, and it was only when she was very weak that she had these illusions. They were of rats and monkeys, and were suggested by the circumstances of her environment. The house she had lived in was infested with rats. There was insanity in the family. Her mother had suffered from puerperal melancholia for two years, and a sister had been insane. [175] She tested her own recovery: assured the medical officers that she had seen and kissed little children without a recurrence of the murderous tendency. She ultimately recovered, and was discharged upon the 5th October, 1869.

2252. Comments on the last Case.-This is certainly a most interesting case, and illustrates the theory we have advanced. Here we find the omnipotence of simple suggestion over a weak mind. First, the suggestion of the killing: the neighbor's story excites the desire to kill, and the remembrance of the man who had disease of the tongue, and who was operated upon in consequence of that disease, suggests the way in which this insane impulse should be externalized. Besides, in this case we have the peculiar character of irresistibility at the same time that we have an oppressive feeling of the unlawfulness of the act. So much did this idea of the unlawfulness oppress her that she carried the idea into her sleep, and often dreamed that she was going to be hanged. No case could better illustrate the principles laid down above. No case could be more instructive with regard to the relations which insane persons who labor under partial moral mania occupy with regard to the State.

253. Concluding Remarks.-It would be easy for us to

enumerate and dwell upon many other kinds of moral monomania as other writers have done, who have expatiated on pseudonomania, oikeiomania, pantomania, religious mania, and others besides; but sufficient has, it seems to us, been said for all practical purposes, and with the statements which will properly fall into the chapter upon the legal relations of this disease, enough of information will be found in these pages to enable the recognition of this disease, and to enable the reader to understand the relations of those who are affected by it to the law of the land.

CHAPTER X.

THE LEGAL RELATIONS OF MORAL MANIA.

254. The Scope of this Chapter.-No questions have become more prominent in connection with medical jurisprudence in recent years, none have been so diligently argued and widely discussed, as those of the existence of moral insanity and irresistible impulse. We have necessarily devoted considerable attention to these questions in this work, and have discussed them at some length in the preceding chapter. The real difficulty which is felt in connection with this question is the reconciliation of the seeming contradiction in the assertion that the moral nature of a man may be perverted and his intellectual nature remain unaffected by the disease. It is not to be doubted that there are diseases which localize their effects in relation to a certain class of actions, a certain set of circumstances, or certain individuals. The Lord Chief Justice of England has spoken thus concerning this matter: (195) "It is not given to man to fathom the mystery of the human intelligence, or to ascertain the constitution of our sentient and intelligent being. But whatever may be its essence, every one must be conscious that the faculties and functions of mind are various and distinct as are the powers and functions of our physical [190] organization. The senses, the instincts, the affections, the passions, the moral qualities, the will, perception, thought, reason, imagination, memory, are so many distinct faculties or functions of mind. The pathology of mental disease, and the experience of insanity in its various forms, teach us that while, on the one hand, all the faculties, moral and intellectual, may be involved in one common ruin, as in the case of the raving maniac, in other instances one or more only of these faculties or functions may be disordered, while the rest