who are genuinely insane. They are more likely to glory in their fancied heroism and martyrdom. Prendergast, when the death sentence was passed upon him, compared his execution to the crucifixion of Christ.

Second. The second point is the peculiarity of our law, which makes all opinion with reference to insanity of equal value, allowing nothing for experience or special knowledge. This anomaly arises from two circumstances: 1st, It is supposed by the people and even by courts that insanity is a condition so plain that any one can detect it. 2d, Mistakes have been made and false pleas of insanity so often urged that expert opinion has fallen into a certain degree of disrepute.

Third.-A case like that of Prendergast should help to make clear to the popular mind the fact that insanity does not by any means necessarily destroy all the mental faculties, but that in some cases, memory, the senses and perceptions and ability to think and plan within certain limits may remain intact, the insanity consisting almost wholly in one or a few delusive ideas or in morbid impulses. While the insane person knows perfectly what the law of the land is and deliberately violates it, but is governed either by an insane delusion which destroys reasoning power or in instances even, by an insane impulse which is beyond control, the talk about an insane person knowing right and wrong contains much absurdity. Sir James Stephens, one of the greatest interpreters of English law, says, "Knowing the act is wrong means nothing more nor less than the power of thinking about it the same as a sane man would think about it," that is, of appreciating the effect of a wrong act in all its extent; the shame and suffering and loss and injustice to the victims and to the perpetrator himself, but it cannot be said that this power exists in many a criminal who is undoubtedly sane, as a professional burglar or thief.

Fourth.-The fact, (well understood by all alienists,) that responsibility often exists with insane persons to a certain degree has been scarcely appreciated by the public. Responsibility must be measured by knowledge and self-control and both of these exist among the insane, large numbers of whom even in the asylum know what is right. Some have and some have not, the ability to control their acts, and to do the right; but those who know what is right and have the ability to do it and do not act accord

d

ing to their knowledge and ability, are responsible. Even Prendergast had motives of malice and hatred and revenge. He knew what the law was; he had no blind over-mastering impulse, but could, if he had chosen, have stayed his hand when aiming the revolver, as he himself stated; but to hold such a person responsible in the same manner as the mentally sound are held responsible, does not accord with the requirements of justice.

It only remains to add that Prendergast had a second trial to decide the question whether he had become insane since his conviction or was insane at the present time, which resulted in finding him sane and a second conviction in consequence of which he was sentenced and hanged on July 13, 1894, after a strenuously conducted defense in which many new witnesses were introduced on both sides, and in which, as on the previous trial, the witnesses most experienced in insanity and competent to judge, as a rule, pronounced him insane.

INSANITY AMONG CRIMINALS.

BY H. E. ALLISON, M. D.,

Medical Superintendent Matteawan State Hospital, Fishkill-on-Hudson, N. Y.

The determination of the relationship which the criminal bears to other members of the human race in regard to his mental development, his responsibility, and his proper treatment, is a matter which closely concerns every citizen, and is daily becoming a subject of more careful study and inquiry among educated men. It is a question which has for its object primarily the protection of society, and incidentally involves the education, reformation, and the safe and suitable custody of the individual so far as such incidental results subserve the main object in view. Criminology is a subject so intimately connected with psychology that it distinctly comes within the scope of the alienist and affords a field which may be profitably investigated. The criminal so often exhibits peculiar anatomical and pathological conditions that he is a creature of interest to the medical profession, and insanity and mental weakness are so commonly discovered in him that he should engage our special attention. The Government of Belgium within recent years has appointed three physicians, alienists of high repute, who constitute a commission of psychological medicine for the careful examination of the inmates of the various prisons of that country. Questions arising every day in our own courts concerning the mental condition of persons charged with crime indicate that there is a leavening of insanity which permeates the criminal class more largely than it does the general community. Acts are often perpetrated of such a nature as to create doubts concerning the mental condition of those who commit them, and the query arises, would it not be better in such cases for society, and for individuals themselves, if they should be by judicial order confined in hospitals for the insane until such time as in the judgment of a competent tribunal they are fit to be at large rather than to be repeatedly sentenced to penal institutions for short terms and then regain their liberty? A person disposed to crime who is mentally unbalanced should not be treated as an ordinary felon.

Unsoundness of mind in the criminal, whether exhibited in the

various degrees of imbecility or in the different forms of chronic cerebral disease, is very generally a mark of physical and mental degeneracy. It is well known that hereditary influences with this class are especially strong, and that unless tendencies toward defective development are corrected by early training and education, by proper methods of living, and by the avoidance of evil habits, individuals and families of degenerate ancestry will further deteriorate and injuriously affect the physical development as well as the intellectual and moral character of the race. Setting aside the inferior types of humanity exhibited in institutions for the care of imbeciles and idiots, there is probably no other special class of mankind wherein mental, moral, and physical degeneracy is more pronounced or wherein these general statements are more broadly applicable than among the convicted inmates of our various penal institutions who suffer from the different forms of mental disease. Taken as a whole, the criminal class exhibits defects both of morals and of intellect, and to an equal degree its members in early youth show evidences of incomplete and imperfect physical development. Forty-one per cent of the inmates of three great prisons in the State of New York, containing a population of over three thousand seven hundred men, were under the age of twenty-five years when convicted. So prominent is this matter of degeneracy that some distinguished students of the subject have asserted that even the sane criminal is a pathological product, and scholars have endeavored to establish a type, assuming by certain bodily signs and fixed anatomical relations determined by measurement to assign limitations within which a man is arbitrarily stamped a criminal. It is true, as a class criminals are defective, but it can not be admitted that there is any physical condition of which it can with certainty be predicated that every subject thereof is of necessity and without choice a criminal. Crime is a complex product, not only of heredity, with its entailed physical disabilities, but also of environment, including evil examples and bad training; and the subject of it, if of sound mind, bears a responsibility for his acts, and must suffer the consequences. Natural, spiritual, and civil laws all entail penalties for those who break them, and the violators must abide the results. Natural law is most remorseless in its operations. Civil laws, though not so certainly retributive, are yet attended by penalties. The insane criminal suffers from all. A well-balanced mind in a healthy body is able to comprehend in a

general way the operations of law in its relation to society, and to grasp the consequences of its violation, not only specifically as relating to his own individuality, but from an abstract point of view in relation to others, and as a rule naturally refrains from infractions. Degenerate or defective man, from whatever causes his deficiencies arise, has less discernment, greater temptations, and less will-power to resist them, and consequently more often falls into the commission of crime and is deprived of his liberty. If we find such people leading an evil life, they should not only be placed in custody, but their degenerate condition should further operate as a bar to their discharge. The average convict in many ways, either physically, educationally, or morally, falls below the standard of normal man; many of them in fact become insane and many more walk on the border line.

The forms of insanity affecting convicts admitted to the Matteawan State Hospital are of peculiar types when compared with those found among the general admissions to civil hospitals for the insane. It is very seldom that acutely maniacal states are witnessed; such cases are exceptional. Usually the mental disturbance is of a quiet form, sub-acute or chronic in its nature, unattended with noisy demonstrations or exhibitions of motor excitement, and very often is associated with arrested physical or mental development.

As a class, patients received at the Matteawan State Hospital from penal institutions, although they often ask for work, dislike to apply themselves to labor continuously, or to practice self-denial in any way. They are seldom actively industrious, or capable of assiduous and intelligent labor. They are prodigal in their ideas of living, and, having very little foresight beyond the present, they are not thrifty. While they suffer as a result of their own acts, they are inclined to believe themselves wronged, and victims of injustice. The aspect of their mental disease, in many cases, seems to be a development along these lines, and is attended with an intensification of their feelings of personal grievance or injury. In prison, while undergoing sentence, they become secretive and suspicious, and soon come to cherish fixed beliefs that the officers are oppressing them, that their fellow-convicts are hostile to them and are conspiring against them, that their food is poisoned, and that they are to receive bodily harm or be put to death. Hallucinations of hearing and ideas of persecution are extremely common phases of their disease. While these delusions may be very