Principles of Forensic Medicine

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H. Renshaw, 1875 - 703 pages
 

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Page 206 - ... it is not every kind of frantic humour or something unaccountable in a man's actions, that points him out to be such a madman as is to be exempted from punishment : it must be a man that is totally deprived of his understanding and memory, and doth not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute, or a wild beast, such a one is never the object of punishment 2.
Page 199 - But in all the cases which have filled Westminster Hall with the most complicated considerations, the lunatics, and other insane persons who have been the subjects of them, have not only had memory, in my sense of the...
Page 215 - is very difficult to define the invisible line that divides perfect " and partial insanity; but it must rest upon circumstances duly " to be weighed and considered both by the judge and jury, lest on " the one side there be a kind of inhumanity towards the defects of " human nature, or, on the other side, too great an indulgence
Page 206 - I can think of is this; such a person as labouring under melancholy distempers hath yet ordinarily as great understanding, as ordinarily a child of fourteen years hath, is such a person as may be guilty of treason or felony.
Page 85 - Disposition of the dead Body of such Child, endeavour to conceal the Birth thereof, and thereupon the Court may pass such Sentence as if such Person had been convicted upon an Indictment for the Concealment of the Birth.
Page xxvi - ... where the death of the deceased is the subject of the charge, and the circumstances of the death the subject of the dying declarations (2).
Page 85 - ... or otherwise disposing of the dead body of such child, endeavour to conceal the birth thereof, and thereupon the court may pass such sentence as if she had been convicted upon an indictment for the concealment of the birth.
Page 199 - ... their lives, but have, in general, been remarkable for subtlety and acuteness. Defects in their reasonings have seldom been traceable — the disease consisting in the delusive sources of thought: — all their deductions, within the scope of their malady, being founded on the immovable assumption of matters as realities, either without any foundation whatever, or so distorted and disfigured by fancy, as to be nearly the same thing as their creation.
Page 209 - That before a plea of insanity should be allowed, undoubted evidence ought to be adduced that the accused was of diseased mind, and that at the time he committed the act he was not conscious of right or wrong.
Page 139 - In this case the husband shall, on the death of his wife, hold the lands for his life, as tenant by the curtesy of England.

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