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A LETTER

TO

_THE LORD CHANCELLOR_.




A

LETTER

TO

THE RIGHT HONORABLE

THE

LORD CHANCELLOR,

ON THE

NATURE AND INTERPRETATION

OF

UNSOUNDNESS OF MIND,

AND

_IMBECILITY OF INTELLECT_.


BY

JOHN HASLAM, M.D.

LATE OF PEMBROKE HALL, CAMBRIDGE.


_LONDON:_

PUBLISHED BY R. HUNTER,

ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD.

***

1823.


PRINTED BY G. HAYDEN,

Little College Street, Westminster.




A LETTER.


MY LORD,

THE present address originates in an anxious wish for the advancement of
medical knowledge, where it is connected with those maladies of the
human mind, that are referable to the court, wherein your Lordship has
so long administered impartial justice. The disorders which affect the
body are, in general, the exclusive province of the medical
practitioner; but, by a wise provision, that has descended to us from
the enlightened nations of antiquity, the law has considered those
persons, whose intellectual derangement rendered them inadequate to the
governance of themselves in society, or incapable of managing their
affairs, entitled to its special protection. If your Lordship should
feel surprized at this communication, or deem my conduct presumptuous,
the thirst of information on an important subject is my only apology;
and I have sought to allay it in the pure stream that issues from the
fountain-head, rather than from subordinate channels or distant
distributions. Although personally a stranger to your Lordship, nearly
thirty years of my life have been devoted to the investigation and
treatment of insanity: of which more than twenty have been
professionally passed in the largest receptacle for lunatics;--and the
press has diffused, in several publications, my opinions and experience
concerning the human mind, both in its sound state and morbid condition.

The medical profession, of which I am an humble member, entertains very
different notions concerning the nature of UNSOUNDNESS of mind, and
IMBECILITY of intellect;--and this difference of opinion has been
displayed on many solemn occasions, where medical testimony has been
deposed.

If a physician were to attempt to search into the existing records and
procedures on insanity, to collect its legal interpretation, such
investigation would probably be a waste of his time, the source of
abundant, and perhaps of incurable error; but to these inconveniences he
will not be subjected in attentively considering your Lordship's
judgments, of which I have availed myself on the present occasion, and
which, having been taken down at the time they were delivered, may be
presumed not materially incorrect. The documents to which I refer are
the judgments of the 22d April, 1815, and the 17th December, 1822, on
the Portsmouth petitions, together with the minutes of conference
between your Lordship and certain physicians, on the 7th January, 1823.
In the judgment on the petition of 1815, it is stated by your
Lordship,[A] "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 idiot 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 idiot 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 contra-distinguished from idiotcy, and as he
was to be contra-distinguished from lunacy, and yet such as made him a
proper object of a commission, in the nature of a commission to inquire
of idiotcy, or a commission to inquire of lunacy. From the moment that
that had been established, down to this moment, it appears to me to have
been at the same time established, that _whatever_ may be the degree of
weakness or imbecility 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
inquiry, 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 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."

The introduction of the term _unsoundness_, to denote a particular state
of disordered mind, which is supposed to differ from idiotcy and lunacy,
has been the source of considerable