W. S. Thorne

“ Learned jurists have said, and still assert, that any person, of common sense and common experience, is as competent to judge between a sound mind and a mind diseased as the [Pg 20] physician or alienist. Sir, this doctrine is repugnant to reason and common sense. As well might they claim that the same persons could as unerringly discriminate between health and disease in some other part of the nervous system—in the retina, the spinal cord, or the medulla-oblongata. The doctrine is utterly false, false in theory and false in fact. ”

“ It certainly would do so, if they could persue the investigation with that careful and impartial spirit of inquiry that alone leads to knowledge. Erroneous tests of insanity have been incorporated into works of law, and these dogmas have become a part of the judicial mind. Practically ignorant of nervous disorders and the physiological knowledge necessary to comprehend them, and unused to contact with the insane, what wonder is it that the judicial ideas of insanity are as crude as the antiquated law which inspired them. The study of the mind is the study of the human body. ”

“ As physicians we behold man in embryo; we often hold in the palm of our hands the germ that had been quickened into a living soul. We subject it to optical glasses and study its physical mysteries. We watch it at every period of its intra-uterine life. We bring it ripe for a more exalted stage of activity into this breathing world. We study its growth and mark its development. We foster and protect it, until we behold the structure complete—a living man. We observe this being in health, and we minister to him in disease. ”

“ If any person, indifferently selected, is as competent as the medical man to judge of what symptoms indicate a diseased brain or nervous system, the same individual, under like circumstances, should be able to determine the symptoms of cholera, scarlatina, measles, or the symptoms of certain poisons. If the assumption of legal gentlemen be true, I would propose that in certain cases of doubtful diagnosis, a jury be empaneled to determine the real character of the disease. ”

“ They do not believe the man insane; their [Pg 22] sympathies forbid so hard a verdict. Insanity is not a contract, a will or a deed. It is not a question of law; it is a question of fact. A fact often difficult to reach; a fact so closely related with physiological and metaphysical facts, so interwoven with the subtile threads of human intelligence, so artful in alluding apprehension, so dangerous in its results, that its judicial investigation can never be safely entrusted to those deficient in knowledge and experience. ”

“ The practice of allowing loquacious attorneys to harangue the court, to brow-beat the medical witness and vex him with impertinence, to sneer at and gibe an expert whilst he elucidates some difficult point to a stupid jury, that has been raised by a yet more stupid attorney, is too despicable for respectful comment. ”

“ The mind, as a separate entity, exists only in the imaginations of men. It can only be studied in relation to its corelative matter, the body. He who most perfectly comprehends the latter must, of necessity, learn much of the former; and it is the special province of the physician to study both. As he is the custodian of the diseased body, so, likewise, is he the ablest minister to the mind diseased. Physicians should be both judges and jury in questions involving mental derangement. Our present Commission of Lunacy is a sufficient guarantee of honest, intelligent and just decision. ”

“ President, we behold the transformation of the caterpillar into the butterfly and we marvel at the mysterious process of designing nature; but what a sluggard is nature when compared to the law! The law can metamorphose a human intellect from health to frenzy and from frenzy to health by the exercise of its resistless fiat. ”

“ Organic Chemistry is filling our libraries with its new facts and experiments. The imperative demand therefore of the medical expert is constant study. The exigencies of the position require, in justice to the profession, a thorough acquaintance with all that is old, and an equal familiarity with all that is new. The range of judicial inquiry often embraces the entire field of medical and surgical knowledge, as well as all their collateral branches. No obsolete [Pg 5] theory, no unborn or possible fact is too remote for searching investigation. ”

“ The forced attendance of medical experts in courts of justice at a rate of compensation arbitrarily fixed, or withheld, is an abuse of power that finds no excuse in justice or necessity.
The citizen is thus virtually deprived of an inalienable right, for the security of which our forefathers yielded up their fortunes and their lives. Let the medical profession of the State of California see to it that the next Legislature pass an act empowering District Judges to allow extra compensation to medical experts summoned in criminal cases. ”

“ Even so to-day our science is changing its foundation stones. Insanity is but just emerging from a complex labyrinth of metaphysical obscurities, and has taken its place in pathology as a physical disease. ”

“ In the almost infinite variety of human affairs there are possibly none more complex than those which are involved in adjusting the legal relations of the insane. And, certainly, no duty which the medical man is called to perform so tries his patience or tests his knowledge and his experience as the character of medical witness in Judicial investigations. ”

“ We feel the heart throb; we interrogate its action, we interpret its sounds. We place our ears upon the chest and tell you of life's breathing tide. We ask the blood its heat, and it records the answer. ”

“ We bid the stomach, liver, kidneys, to bear us witness, and they respond at our bidding. As we behold the growth of mind with the body, so do we witness their decay. We study psychology in its various relations to physical disease. ”

“ A murder has been committed; the defense set up insanity, and a judicial investigation is had, to determine the mental condition of the accused; six experts are summoned to assist in the trial; they are detained three days and a half; a bill for expert service is rendered the county, endorsed by the District Judge and the District Attorney, for an amount below the actual loss that each had sustained by absence from his practice, and the munificent sum allowed by the county for three and a half days service is fifteen dollars a piece. ”

“ It yields to the medical man a full measure of practical benefits in the treatment of human maladies. The physician's life, then, is chiefly devoted to the special study of physical disease and mental manifestations in relation thereto. Will the jurist, yet assert that the man whose life is spent in the manufacture of shoes, the [Pg 25] production of wheat, and the growth of four-footed beasts, is as competent to estimate the value and interpret the symptoms of diseased nerve centres as he, whose life has been spent in their special study? ”

“ Any person holding a diploma from a reputable school of medicine and engaged in the active practice of his profession, is in law an expert. In this capacity he may be summoned at any moment to testify to questions of fact, hypothetical or theoretical. The questions thus propounded to the medical witness are frequently complex in their nature, involve a wide range of inquiry, and necessitate on his part a just discrimination, extensive knowledge and large experience. Again, medical science is ever varying ”

“ True to the extent of that one experience for twenty years; but suppose twenty other observers, who have systematically recorded their experience for the same length of time—who are at least your equals in the profession and vastly your superiors in their opportunities for observation—should have met with results adverse to your own, would you not pause ere you ventured to assert the accuracy of your knowledge under oath in a public tribunal? The experience of one man, though of incalculable value, is as naught to establish the truth or falsity of a principle ”

“ The same individual in the short space of two years, without apparent change in his mental state, so far as could be determined by physicians or friends, is thrice pronounced insane by as many commissions of lunacy, twice sane by two different juries and once insane by a District Judge, in order to annul a deed that was executed just prior to the verdict of a jury that declared him sane and therefore responsible for his acts. ”

“ Principles like the rocks left in its ancient bed, alone remain to mark its passage and reveal its work; accepted truths of to-day may be untruths to-morrow. Errors have been enunciated by Philosophers, have been sanctified by the Church, and promulgated by Priests, but have finally been overtaken by this same resistless stream of progress, and by it have been swept out of the world. ”

“ A question of physical disease involving nerve centers. I will here venture the opinion that the day is not far distant, when investigations involving insanity only, will be more expeditiously and justly determined without the assistance of either lawyers or juries. Lawyers tell us sir, that the merchant, the artisan, the laborer and the men who till the soil are as competent and intelligent judges of mental phenomena as the physician. ”

“ The position of the accused also, is one that naturally excites in the minds of the jury the deepest sympathy. They can not, and will not, understand why a poor fellow who sleeps little, talks strangely, and facetiously styles himself General Jackson, should be sent away to an asylum, deprived of all that makes life dear to them. ”

“ We scan the optic discs, that we may measure the blood currents and detect unhealthful changes in the sensorium itself. We regard the face and note the emotions that sweep over it. We read upon its pallid surface the signs of agony, peace, fear, love, hope, despair, death. ”

“ I now pass to the second part of my subject, relating to the trial of persons accused of insanity. Section 1763 of the "Code of Civil Procedure" of the State of California declares that "a person of unsound mind may be placed in an asylum for such persons, upon the order of the County Judge of the county in which he resides, as follows: First—The Judge must be satisfied by the oath of two respectable physicians that such person is of unsound mind, and unfit to be at large. ”

“ Physiological Chemistry has scarcely conned its alphabet, and its unknown literature, pregnant with marvelous truths has yet to unfold its treasures to us. Equally unexplored is the vast field embraced in the ætiology of diseases, the character of morbid germs and their mode of entry into the economy. ”

“ From the fantastic inconsistency of the foregoing decisions, a disinterested person might be led to infer, that of all the dramatis personæ of this legal farce, the chief actor is the least liable to the imputation of insanity. ”

“ The life study of the physician is man; man in his entirety, man as an animal, man as a rational entity, man in relation to himself, and man in relation to his physical surroundings—air, earth, water, organic and inorganic nature. ”

“ If it be found that the petitioner be of sound mind and capable of taking care of himself and his property, his restoration to capacity shall be adjudged, and the guardianship of such person, if such person be not a minor, shall cease. ”

“ Their reading is desultory, and as the increasing demand of professional duties press them for time, they come to rely more and more upon their own experience, with an overweening confidence as to its entire accuracy. Now, no sane man doubts the value of individual experience. ”

“ The ancient injunction, "Thou shall not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn," appears to be pretty generally observed towards all kinds of animals, the world over, with the exception of medical experts, who do an amount of public treading at a rate of compensation inferior to that accorded to the time of a first-class shoemaker. ”

“ He who declares that mind is a function of the brain alone, asserts an untenable theory. Every organ in the body ministers directly or indirectly to the manifestations of mind. Mens sana in cor [Pg 26] pore sano is an axiom. Every organ in the body is connected by direct continuity of nervous structure with the brain. ”

“ That if the provisions of our Code, relative to trial by jury of persons alleged to be insane, were hereafter to be applied in all cases, there would be no more commitments to our insane asylums in future, except raving maniacs, and the present inmates of those institutions, once restored to liberty, could never again be returned to them. Let us see if [Pg 13] the facts will prove the theorem. About the year 1873, one A. B., an intemperate and wealthy citizen of this county, was thought to be insane, and a guardian was appointed to take charge of his estate. ”

“ We see it infinitely manifested as physical decay encroaches upon its citadel. We study mental phenomena as the earliest precursor of physical death. We observe, study and interpret, mental phenomena as a most important aid to physical diagnosis. ”