The Rational Treatment of Incipient Insanity and the Urgent Need for Legislation

Abstract

THE compound title of this Association not only indicates that its members represent the professions of law and medicine, but it also indicates that the matter which comes under its purview would of necessity receive the special assistance of the two professions for its full discussion and complete solution. The Medico-Legal Society therefore could scarcely have arnore fit subject for its consideration than the proper care and the best treatment for commencing insanity. The victims of insanity in its many forms naturally claim the protection and the care of the two sections of which the Society is constituted. They come under the care of the medical man for their mental and physical condition, and they need the supervision and help of the lawyer for the custody of their property and for the safeguarding of their liberty. In consequence of this dual control, the term insanity has for members of the society two different meanings. To the medical section insanity is a disease, which brings about (sometimes suddenly, but more often gradually) a change in conduct of such a kind that actions or speech indicate a loss of self-control and * Read before the Society. November 25. 1913.