Maltreatment

“ My patient literally leaped at me, and caught me by the breast, with his eyes starting, his lips quivering, and the veins about his temples standing out.
"Tell me again," he panted. "Swear that it is true."
"There is no need," I said. "How could I have known?"
"No," he said, calming down; "there is no need," and his hands dropped to his side. "Great heavens! And here have I been living this life of torture, hiding away like a criminal, cursed by the horror of the crime, doubly accursed by the drink I have taken to drown my thoughts of being haunted by that man." ”

“ If a woman is quick with child, and by a potion or otherwise, killeth it in her womb, or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child, this, though not murder, was by the ancient law homicide, or manslaughter. ”

“ You murdered your own child, not, indeed, with your own hands,—you drove another to do the desperate deed, and that other, your wife, who came to you with a loving and trusting heart, to save and to be saved; and you, to gratify your selfish passion, drove her to the commission 62of the crime of ante-natal child-murder,—a crime that must forever weigh upon her soul like a mountain of guilt and shame; a deed, after the doing of which, no true woman can ever, in this life, stand proud and stainless, in conscious innocence and dignity, before the tribunal of her womanhood. ”

“ I know that men's lives have been shortened by these brutal assaults. And that is only a polite way of saying that murder has been committed here." Turning next to the matter of the women's wards, I said: "A patient in this ward—a man in his right mind, who leaves here on Tuesday next—told me that a woman patient told him that she had seen many a helpless woman dragged along the floor by her hair, and had also seen them choked by attendants who used a wet towel as a sort of garrote. I have been through the mill and believe every word of the abuse. ”

“ New York.—“The willful killing of an unborn quick child, by an injury to the mother of such child, which would be murder if it resulted in the death of such mother, shall be deemed manslaughter in the first degree. ”

“ After enduring supposed persecution for as long as he considers it possible, the melancholic turns on his persecutors and inflicts bodily harm. The simplest actions, even efforts to benefit the patient by enforcement of the regulations of the physician, may be misconstrued into serious attempts at personal injury, for which the patient may execute summary vengeance. At times the hallucinations take on the character of the supposition that attempts to poison them are being made. ”

“ On the other hand, there is well-nigh absence of motive impelling to the commission of so grave an offence, if we suppose the death of the child to have been intended, in the first instance, either by the nurse or by her and some person unknown, present with her in her room on the fatal night. Much of this difficulty, however, disappears, if we fall back on the theory that the original intention was not to murder the child, but to stifle its cries, and that the blanket was pressed too long to its little lips. ”

“ In the code it is enacted, that medical men shall be consulted whenever death has been occasioned by violent means, whether criminal or accidental, by wounds, poisons, hanging, drowning, or the like; as well as in cases of concealed pregnancy, procured abortion, child-murder, &c. ”

“ A murder which is perpetrated by means of poison or lying in wait, torture or by any other kind of wilful, deliberate or premeditated killing, or which is committed in avoiding or preventing lawful arrest or effecting an escape from legal custody, or in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, arson, rape in the first degree, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, or mayhem, or sexual molestation of a child under the age of thirteen years, is murder of the first degree. ”

“ The demand of persons with the ‘contrary’ sexual sentiment that persons of the same sex can conclude a legal marriage has obtained satisfaction, seeing they have been numerous enough to elect a majority of deputies having the same tendency. [471] Sadists, ‘bestials,’ nosophiles, and necrophiles, etc., find legal opportunities to gratify their inclinations. Modesty and restraint are dead superstitions of the past, and appear only as atavism and among the inhabitants of remote villages. The lust of murder is confronted as a disease, and treated by surgical intervention, etc. ”

“ I see women with bruised and battered faces, I see their cuts and wounds and putrefying sores, I hear stories of devilish cruelty, and I hear the poor bruised women pleading that their husbands may not be punished for their cruelty. ‘Don’t send him to prison! Don’t send him to prison! He is a good husband when he is sober!’ I hear the words again and again. I see more women with poor, thin clothing. I look into their faces, and I see sorrow writ large and rings of care around their eyes, and in their hearts a weight of agony that makes them ready to curse God and die. ”

“ A wife might be tortured (but only after her slaves had been put to the torture) if accused of poisoning her husband. In accusations of crimes other than treason or sorcery, certain persons were protected by the dignity of their position or their tender age. ”

“ Cruelty is defined as consisting in assault, ill-treatment (falling short of actual assault) , neglect, abandonment or exposure of the child in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health, including injury to or loss of sight, hearing or limb, or any organ of the body or any mental derangement ”

“ The fœtus is then called a child—the law ordaining that, if a woman intentionally procure, or such parties as may assist in so doing, abortion or miscarriage before quickening, it is misdemeanor, if after, murder. ”

“ Thus, in treating of murder, it will be necessary to consider the various modes in which it may be effected; as, by hanging, strangling, suffocation, shooting, stabbing, poisoning, and, at the same time, the different kinds of sudden death from natural causes, which may be mistaken for the results of violence. ”

“ College professors, delicate ladies, children not yet in their teens, have committed homicide, why not this handsome gentleman in the wool business? Or if you won't have murder—and I agree that blood is rather tiresome, it has been overdone so much—bring a woman into the case. ”

“ Yet, that same woman who went out muttering curses on you, for warning husbands against imposing an undesired maternity on their wives, has, to my knowledge, had such a loathed and wretched burden thrust upon her twice, in two years, and each time has killed her child 113before it was born. Another lady, my near neighbor, who thinks such subjects should never be agitated, publicly, has three times, within so many years, committed the crime of ante-natal murder. ”

“ The number of crimes for which death and bodily torture have been the punishment can scarcely be recorded, and if they could it would be of no value. They would run into the hundreds and probably the thousands. ”

“ Naturally, the practice of child-murder hardens the hearts and petrifies the feelings of those systematically engaged in it. The tortures inflicted on the patient are, no doubt, in many cases unavoidable if the end is to be achieved ”

“ Fasts, prayers, self-torture, abstinence from business, were, by the authority of the ecclesiastical code, declared to be the divinely appointed methods of expiating the guilt of rape, of fornication, of adultery, of robbery, of murder, and of every degree and species of crime. ”

“ The wounding of parents, and parricide, exceeding by so large a ratio all other acts of violence against the person, I believe can be explained in no other way. Admitting, as I have already done, that the great opportunity afforded of making attempts upon the persons of parents has some value as a factor, yet we must bear in mind that, from the nature of their domestic life, women have opportunities equally as great of inflicting injury upon others. ”

“ Men of all ranks and ages, done to death by his hand or his head, by poison, by the knife, by drowning, by starvation—women deceived or violated, and then murdered, while their kisses were yet warm on his lips—infants tortured to death in the very wantonness of cruelty, and crime that must have been nigh akin to madness, gibbered, and glared upon him. ”

“ In the old days physical torture wrung a false confession of guilt from hundreds of men and women. To-day it is mental torture that now and again causes an innocent person to plead guilty to crimes that can be purged with imprisonment, but more frequently there is a solid and substantial benefit as the temptation. ”

“ In many cases they are explanations which may arise from the observation of the mutative relations between cruelty, bloodthirstiness, and sensuality. With regard to this older authors like Mitchell, [98] Blumröder, [99] Friedreich, [100] have brought examples which are still of no little worth. They speak of cases in which many people, not alone men, use the irritation developed by greater or lesser cruelty for sexual purposes: the torturing of animals, biting, pinching, choking the partner, etc. Nowadays this is called sadism. ”

“ A mother may wish her child's death-agony ended, but should she strangle him she is guilty of infanticide, and the man who lays violent hands on himself is, as we have said, more guilty in the sight of God than the most atrocious murderer. ”

“ Let every man remember, the vengeance to a vital law knows only justice, not mercy, and a single moment of illicit pleasure will bring many curses upon him, and drain out the life of his innocent children, and bring a double burden of disease and sorrow to his wife. ”

“ There may be cases in which the seduction, without producing pregnancy or sexual disease, causes bodily injury, impairing the health of the servant, and resulting in a loss of services to her master. So the criminal connection may be accomplished under such circumstances, as, for instance, of violence or fraud, that its proximate effect is mental distress or disease, impairing her health and destroying her capacity to labor. ”

“ A slave taken in adultery with one of his master’s wives was invariably put to death. Women were compelled by torture to name their seducers; if the accused man denied the charge, the woman was asked to describe some personal peculiarity of his, or some mark on his body which could be identified ”

“ From the time that she was discovered to have taken poison till she breathed her last she lay in the arms of the poor man, who besought her to live, that her only son might atone for his crime, and not be a parricide. ”

“ At the same time it must not be forgotten that one of the most dangerous results is due to this attitude. Law-makers have without further consideration kept in mind the mental condition of the mother and have made child-murder much less punishable than ordinary murder. ”

“ Whoever maliciously, or without lawful justification, with intent to cause and procure the miscarriage of a woman, then pregnant with child, shall administer to her, prescribe for her, or advise or direct her to take or swallow any poison, drug, medicine, or noxious thing, or shall cause, or procure her, with like intent, to take or swallow any poison, drug, medicine, or noxious thing ”

“ I can perfectly understand the value of this practice in cases where either suspicion has attached, or where the circumstances of the decease, as to time and place, would indicate a violent death; but where a person, surrounded by his children, living in all the quiet enjoyment of an easy and undisturbed existence, drops off by some one of the ills that flesh is heir to, only a little more rapidly than his neighbour at next door, why this should be a case for a coroner and his gang, I cannot, for the life of me, conceive. ”

“ In a subsequent case against the same practitioner, Bayley, B., said to the jury, “I have no hesitation in saying for your guidance, that if a man be guilty of gross neglect in attending to his patient after he has applied a remedy, or of gross rashness in the application of it, and death ensues in consequence, he will be liable to a conviction for manslaughter.” “I consider rashness will be sufficient to make it manslaughter. ”

“ When complaint is made of their sickness, how does the prisoner behave? Does she not administer to them with as much art and skill as a physician could? Does she not prescribe proper liquids and draughts to absorb and take off the edge of the corroding poison? If she knew not what it was how could she administer so successfully to prevent the fatal consequences of it both in the maid and the charwoman? During this transaction the unhappy father finds himself afflicted with torturing pains immediately after receiving the composition from his daughter. ”

“ Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents, and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by crime; yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true that, in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a bodily transgression is recognized; but none appear to infer that, if this bodily transgression is vicious, so too is every bodily transgression. The fact is, that all breaches of the laws of health are physical sins. ”

“ As the mental weakness increases, such patients become criminal by reason of exhibition, masturbation in the streets, and attempts at immoral acts with children,
If conditions of mental excitement come on, attempts at rape are committed, or, at least, grossly immoral acts,—the patient attacks women on the street, appears in public in very imperfect dress; or, half-clothed, tries to force his way into strange houses, to cohabit with the wife of an acquaintance, or to marry the daughter on the spot. ”