Invalides

“ The facts of mal-vitalization are as much to be attended to as those of mal-formation. If the woman with a twisted pelvis is to be considered an exempt, the woman with a defective organization should be recognized as belonging to the invalid corps. We shudder to hear what is alleged as to the prevalence of criminal practices; if back of these there can be shown organic incapacity or overtaxing of too limited powers, the facts belong to the province of the practical physician, as well as of the moralist and the legislator, and require his gravest consideration. ”

“ If, moreover, possessing skill, he undertakes to heal a wound or cure a disease, and through his neglect the party is not cured, or is impaired in health by the treatment, he is also responsible. Behold the two horns of the dilemma which threaten the physician! If he has skill, and neglects to employ it, he is liable in damages; if he has not skill, he is equally liable. ”

“ Every physician of large experience must have seen cases of self-created, unresisted invalidism end with mysterious abruptness and the return of mental, moral and physical competence, under the influence of some call upon their sense of duty made by calamity, such as an acute illness in the household, financial ruin, or the death of a husband. ”

“ But throughout my long experience with convicts I have known not more than a dozen who seemed to me black-hearted, deliberate criminals; and among these, as it happened, but one was of criminal parentage. Crime is not a disease; but there's no doubt that disease often [Pg 22] leads to crime. Of the defective, the feeble-minded, the half-insane, and the epileptic there are too many in every prison; one is too many; but they can be counted by the hundreds in our aggregate of prisons. Often warm-hearted, often with strong religious tendencies, they are deficient in judgment or in moral backbone. ”

“ Have I to be told that in this world men, foolish or wicked, do inflict tremendous injuries on their unoffending fellows? Let God look to it, I say with reverence, and do you look to this point, where the injury is, begins. The foolish man who throws some disfiguring liquid in your face, which to remove you must have recourse to some dangerous surgical operation,—perilling himself, too, by the consequent vengeance of the law, if you sink under knife or cauterizing iron,—shall I say ‘the fault is yours—why submit to the operation? ”

“ But the roots of criminality are not only deeper than professionalism, they are deeper also than any merely acquired disease. I have frequently had occasion to note the remarkable resemblances between criminals and idiots. There is the same tendency to anatomical abnormalities of the muscles, arteries, bones, etc.; in both the muscular system is weak; there is the same tendency also to small and weak hearts, with valvular defects. ”

“ The consequences, then, to the poor sufferer, whose offence is, at most, but an error of judgment or a weakness of the heart, are the same as if her imprudence were indeed a crime of the blackest dye. ”

“ Both minds must meet in such a transaction; and if one is so weak, unsound, and diseased that the party is incapable of understanding the nature and quality of the act to be performed, or its consequences, he is incompetent to assent to the terms a d conditions of the instrument, whether that state of his mind was produced by mental or physical disease, and whether it resulted from ordinary sickness, or from accident, or from debauchery, or from habitual and protracted intemperance. ”

“ Hence, to those who are struggling with disease and pain, with ignorance and defect, with vice, and with crime, but for the most part too separately, it is time to say that all these four evils are capable of being viewed together, and largely even treated together. ”

“ A poor, harmless young officer—but why enter into the details of the infamous case? they are but too well known, and if ever cruelty, pride, and cowardice, and things much worse than even cruelty, cowardice, and pride were brought to light, and, at the same time, countenanced, they were in that case. ”

“ A leech who through carelessness, or wilful neglect, or gross want of skill, failed to cure a wound, might be brought before a brehon or judge, and if the case was proved home against him, he had to pay the same fine to the patient, as if he had inflicted the wound with his own hand. ”

“ Affirmative Defense.— It is an affirmative defense in a trial by military commission under this chapter that, at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, the accused, as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, was unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of the acts. Mental disease or defect does not otherwise constitute a defense. ”

“ Under the classification of the unfit he places all those persons who, on account of mental, moral or physical defect, constitute a burden to society. These are, principally, the epileptic, the pauper, the insane and the criminal. ”

“ Every thing must be considered as of importance by a soldier, replied my Prussian acquaintance, which his officer orders him to do. In all probability, the fault was involuntary; but it is not always possible to distinguish involuntary faults from those that happen through negligence. To prevent any man from hoping that his negligence will be forgiven as involuntary, all blunders are punished, from whatever cause they happen; the consequence of which is, that every man is more attentive and alert than he would otherwise be. ”

“ It is in the line of man's primal duty of concealment. But if a man thus disabled were applying for a life-insurance policy, or were an applicant for re-enlistment in the army, or were seeking employment where bodily wholeness is a requisite, it would be his duty to make known his defect; and the concealment of it from the parties interested would be in the realm of the lie. ”

“ And although between the injury done by an offender and his moral turpitude, there is no constant and exact proportion, yet the greatness of the injury done, affords, on the average of cases, a better measure of the discipline required, than do the votes of Parliamentary majorities and the guesses of judges. ”

“ Every soldier of the army of the United States who has served, or may serve, honestly and faithfully, twenty years in the same, and every discharged soldier, who has suffered by reason of disease or wounds incurred in the service and in the line of his duty, rendering him incapable of further military service, if such disability has not been occasioned by his own misconduct. ”

“ I have more than once heard physicians remark the singular immunity a fool's skull seems to possess from the evil effects of injury—as if Nature, when denying a governing faculty, had, in kind compensation, imparted a triple thickness to the head thus exposed. ”

“ Recall to mind the rich men and women whom you have known; are not most of them invalids? A person of that class whose physical disabilities do not oblige him to take a periodical course of hygienic and medical treatment is as rare as is an invalid among the laboring classes. ”

“ What puts it into the heart or the head of the assailed party to repel injury with injury? It is like begetting its like: injury suggesting, prompting, and producing injury. No better way is thought of or desired, than life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, blow for blow, force for force, injury for injury. ”

“ Stat. 1913, § 4244, determining who shall be excluded, 'Persons likely to become a public charge' are mentioned between paupers and professional beggars, and along with idiots, persons dangerously diseased, persons certified by the examining surgeon to have a mental or physical defect of a nature to affect their ability to earn a living, convicted felons, prostitutes, and so forth. ”

“ Certain of the physical peculiarities most frequently seen in criminals have an influence of this kind and merit discussion. A knowledge of them will furnish clergymen with reasons for a larger charity to those unfortunates, and a greater tolerance for their relapses, without allowing sentiment to play too important a rôle in dealing with them. There are all grades of defective human beings, from the idiot up to those little less than normal. Anatomical peculiarities prevent the proper functions of the nervous system, as it is not hard to understand. ”

“ My own experience, nevertheless, goes to show that the cause of resistances, refusals, and similar difficulties have their basis in ordinary physical defects, which can be cured by moderate and proper education. ”

“ The judge was fully persuaded that the infliction of pain upon the weak and sickly was the only means of preventing weakness and sickliness from spreading, and that ten times the suffering now inflicted upon the accused was eventually warded off from others by the present apparent severity. ”

“ In the face of the fact that mental deficiency is undoubtedly the most important single factor to be considered today in the institutional care of delinquents, one hesitates to correct even the most exaggerated impressions as to its importance. On the other hand, it seems time to modify opinions which raise false hopes as to solving the problem of delinquency by caring for the feeble-minded. ”

“ Thanks to his skill, the invalids were freed from the more violent of their pains, but this freedom was followed by a weakness so alarming that they could hardly raise their heads from their pillows—a state of things which excited the intense envy of the third officer, who, owing to his responsibilities, might just as well have been without one. ”

“ In a word, there were Physicians for every Disease, but none pretended to more than one. The same thing was observ’d in other Arts, for better maintaining of which, a Law was enacted, that if any Person exercis’d more than one Profession or Trade, he should incur the most grievous of Punishments ”

“ Among over forty physical and mental factors, the only other condition which he found to have significant relation to criminality is a generally defective physique as shown by height and weight, neither of which is correlated with intelligence. ”

“ When a physician names an ailment, describing its symptoms and their danger, he has committed an unconscious offence against being, against his patient's happiness and liberty, and will make a sure job for himself, if not a fatal one for his patient. ”

“ It would have been wonderful indeed, if, a century ago, when our statute book was written in blood, when our fellow-subjects at home were under the ban of religious disability, and beaten to the earth beneath the weight of penal enactments, any traces of wisdom had been exhibited in the management of a distant dependency. ”

“ It states regarding “moral imbeciles” that they are persons “who from an early age display some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities on which punishment has had little or no deterrent effect.” It specifically distinguishes them from the group of feeble-minded which require guardianship because of inability to care for themselves. ”

“ Men physically unfit are wholly exempted, and men who have not, at the time of the examination, attained the required physical standard are put back for re-examination after an interval. Men who, otherwise suitable, have some slight infirmity are drafted into the non-combatant branches. ”

“ A physician once defended himself from raillery by saying, "I defy any person whom I ever attended, to accuse me of ignorance or neglect."—"That you may do safely," replied an auditor, "for you know, doctor, dead men tell no tales." ”

“ If the invalid of five years can smile at some of the anxieties and scrupulosities of his first season of retreat, much more clear-sighted must the ten years’ thinker be in regard to the snares and troubles of his early or midway term. If, amidst{211} the gain, as little as possible be lost, the privileges of our state may be such,—not as, indeed, to compare with those of health and a natural mode of life,—but as may satisfy a humble and rational hope that our season of probation is not lost, nor materially wasted. ”

“ There is, doubtless, another class of faults—those of willful carelessness or neglect—which must be specially pointed out to the attention of the delinquents, and a degree of discredit attached to the commission of them, and perhaps, in special cases, some kind of punishment imposed, as the most proper corrective of the evil. ”

“ The consideration of these cases gives a clear idea of how a physician endeavours to fill up gaps in his knowledge of the character of the man, his heredity and environment, as well as his previous actions at various times in life when under the stress of emotion. It may be considered that such a weighing of circumstances will serve to excuse many genuine criminals who eminently deserve to be punished. This is, however, the assumption of the older generation who considered that if a man did a material wrong he must be punished for it. ”

“ He pointed out that there are patients truly insane and irresponsible, who suffer from moral defect or derangement, without such an amount of intellectual disorder as would be legally recognised either in a court of law or for the purpose of certification. ”

“ I have a higher opinion of the surgical profession than of any other. The practice of the law," he concluded, "is too severe for poor human nature, for he who distorts truth and exults at the success of injustice at last will hardly know right from wrong." ”

“ Two of the three necessary facts, viz, muster and disability, are usually susceptible of easy proof; but the third, origin in the service, is often difficult and in many deserving cases impossible to establish. That very many of those who endured the hardships of our most bloody and arduous campaigns are now disabled from diseases that had a real but not traceable origin in the service I do not doubt. ”