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On the Legal Doctrines of the Responsibility of the Insane and its Consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Thomas Laycock*
Affiliation:
Practice of Medicine and of Clinical Medicine, and Medical Psychology and Mental Diseases, in the University of Edinburgh

Extract

I do not know that a more useful question can occupy this our last hour of meeting together than that of the legal responsibility of the insane, and how it affects us in our relations to our patients, more especially in regard to moral treatment. Our visits to Millholm have enabled us to judge of the value of that method, as carried out in the largest private asylum in Scotland. At the Crichton Institution, where we were so kindly entertained by Dr. Gilchrist and the directors, at our late visit, we witnessed its highest present development, and learn, moreover, of what it is further capable. Dr. Browne was the first to introduce the method into Scotland, when appointed to be the medical superintendent of the Crichton Institution, at a time when the lunatic was treated worse than a felon. With the sanction of the Board of Lunacy he most kindly consented to accompany us on our visit, and to give us a discourse on the moral treatment of the insane.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1864

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References

See note by Dr. W. A. F. Browne, at end of this paper, p. 865.Google Scholar

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