childbirth, we have it connected with the weakness of childhood with the weakness of age, with the change of life, and various bodily diseases; and finally we find it in connection with previous attacks of mental disease. The result, then, of these researches which have been made into the intricacies of this subject are these that of twelve persons attacked with insanity, six recover and six die sooner or later. That of the six who recover three only will remain sane during the rest of their lives, and that the recovery of the other three will not be permanent.'

481. The Slowness of Cure.-With regard to the cure, when it does take place, it is to be remembered that health, no more than Rome, is to be built in a day. Health returns very gradually. It is made up of many simples, and these are only to be reacquired slowly. In some cases, it is true that a man is sane to-day and insane to-morrow, and that the change to sanity from insanity may be as rapid; but this is certainly exceptional. It is easy to jump over a precipice, but if one wants to get to the top from the bottom, he must be content to clamber up the hill. It need scarcely be added that, as recovery of health is not a coup, but a gradual process, so must the recovery of responsibility or civil ability be also a matter of time. But as the law cannot recognize the minute distinctions which exist between disease to-day aud to-morrow, it cannot recognize graduated responsibility; and it is only necessary to remember that this recovery of mental strength, and therefore of the mental qualities necessary for the appreciation of one's position and rights and duties, is gradual, that due allowance may be made for those persons who have recently suffered from an attack of mental disease, and that it is safer to regard such persons as still irresponsible for criminal acts and incapable of civil privileges, even although the recovery may seem very complete unless the contrary can be proved. Let the presumption be in favor of 319 their want of capacity and their irresponsibility, and no injustice is likely to arise. At the same time this pre

Older writers regarded the tendency to recurrence as one in six, and not as one in two.

sumption is to be looked upon as liable to be rebutted by proof of its opposite. There is really much virtue in these presumptions of law.

2482. As to the Signs of Recovery.-Some medical men have entered into descriptions of the symptoms which they regard as hopeful, and as indicating a tendency to recovery. When these are anything other than the actual return of the thoughts and affections of the insane person in a minor degree to their accustomed channels-in which case they seem to be regarding recovery as a hopeful sign of itself they are disputed, and no real agreement exists as to what symptoms have, and what have not, a prognostic value. It is surely not prognosis to observe that when a man is getting better he is getting better.

CHAPTER XXV.

MEDICAL EXPERTS..

483. The Claims of Science. This does not seem to be an inopportune time to examine the question as to the use of experts in courts of law, and to endeavor to arrive at some definite principles in relation to the admissibility of their evidence. All sorts of absurd claims are, in these days, made in the name of science. Science is doing all the talking in our modern time, but it is a question whether it is making more real progress in the laboratory or on the platform, whether it is really wielding the sword with which it may conquer nature, or only flourishing the laurels it has already won. Never was there so much talking about science, but it must remain to be seen whether it is making as much progress through the froth and spume of this wide-spread praise as in the days when folk were willing to talk less and do more. However that may be, its claims are enormous. It claims to be the only method of education; and men like Herbert Spencer and Huxley assert that no good is to be got out of the osteology of thought which lies in mathematics, or out of the vague knight-errantry of thought which lies chronicled in history, but that in the facts of science alone there is nourishment for minds.

484. The Claims of Science in relation to Jurisprudence. But the claims of science in relation to law are no less striking, and it is curious to note that those scientists who are least well informed are the most exacting in their demands. This might seem strange at first, but a little consideration will show that this phenomena is explicable upon the ordinary principles that the greatest charlatans are those who demand the greatest amount of credulity. It has been

asserted with some truth that it is slaves make tyrants, and it is certain that it is the credulous who create impostors. However, our experience of lawyers is that they are somewhat disinclined to yield a ready adhesion to this new creed of science, unless it can show the credentials which entitle it to be received at the court of belief, and these are good and sufficient reasons. We shall see what this new creed is in relation to the subject with which we have in this place to do. Dr. Maudsley is one of the prophets of this new religion of science. He writes perspicuous books without putting much in them. What is new in his works is generally of questionable veracity, and what is true cannot at the same time lay claim to novelty. Still he writes well, and his books are read; and, possibly, he is believed in. He is one of those who is exorbitant in his demands for science, and who regards all lawyers as little better than numbskulls, because they are not prepared to accept medical evidence at more than its worth. In the work before us there is some foolish sneering at the late Lord Westbury because he condemned the evil habit which had grown up of assuming that "insanity was a physical disease." We have already had occasion to deal with the whole question of insanity in relation to law, and to point out that the undoubted fact which is asserted by medical psychologists that insanity is a physical disease, has nothing to do with the question of the irresponsibility of the insane in courts of law, or their incapacity to exercise the functions of citizens. No doubt every insane act is due to a certain disease in the brain, but those gentlemen who assert that, would not deny that any act which a so-called sane man can perform is due to his organism, due to a certain change, say, in the convolutions of the brain. But although physiologists alone are capable of appreciating these changes, it could not, we imagine, seriously be contended that all cases of contract should be submitted to them for their approval, and it does seem to us equally ridiculous to say that "the ground which medical men should firmly and consistently take in regard to insanity is that it is a physical disease, that they alone are competent to decide upon its presence or absence; and that it is quite as absurd for lawyers or the general public to give their opinion on the subject in a doubtful

case as it would be for them to do so in a case of fever." Yet these are Dr. Maudsley's words. No lawyer wants, so far as we know, to give his opinion either as to insanity or as to fever. He does not profess to be able to do so, but he does assert that he and the public are in a position to judge of conduct, that the proof of the existence of such insanity as incapacitates for civil acts, or renders an individual irresponsible in case of the commission of a criminal outrage lies in conduct, and that the fact that in the case of the insane the act is the result of certain changes which medical men have chosen to call disease, and that in the other it is due to certain changes which medical men have, with as much arbitrariness, chosen to call health, has nothing whatever to do with the subject. It is passing strange that persons of sound intelligence cannot see this, but that they will go on writing and speaking as most medical men write and speak in these days. We hear of the bench "frowning down psychological truth," and we have Dr. Maudsley claiming that insanity should be treated, "not as a subject of moral inquiry, but as a disease, to be investigated by the same methods as other diseases." As to this last claim, let us say one word. Law has nothing to do with the investigation of diseases. If a man has lost a leg, and it is necessary to prove that he could not have walked to a certain place in consequence of that deformity, all the evidence that will be necessary will be such as proves that he was legless: evidence as to the disease under which he labored, and the necessity of the surgical operation, is beside the point at issue. So it is in the case of loss of mind: whether the cause of the loss be general paralysis or brain wasting, matters not to the lawyer, although it may to the psychological pathologist; but the question that law has to decide is this, Was the individual at a certain time, and in relation to a certain act, in such a relation as to knowledge and will, as that which is occupied by

Responsibility in Mental Disease, by Henry Maudsley, M.D. London: 1874. The opinions of some of the best informed members of the medical profession in America may be ascertained from a perusal of the discussion which took place at the meeting of the association of medical superintendents held in Wisconsin in May, 1872, in the reprint from the American Journal of Insanity, pp. 66, 87. The opinion of Dr. Walker, of the Lunatic Hospital, Boston, Mass., p. 85, is particularly worthy of attention.

BR. INS.-40