Lunacy versus liberty : a letter to the Lord Chancellor, on the defective state of the law, as regards insane persons, and private asylums for their reception : with remarks, original and select, including the author's own case, and others / by William Griggs.

  • Griggs, William, late Patient at Kensington House.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lunacy versus liberty : a letter to the Lord Chancellor, on the defective state of the law, as regards insane persons, and private asylums for their reception : with remarks, original and select, including the author's own case, and others / by William Griggs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    A LETTER TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR, My Lord, The subject I am about to introduce to your notice, is entitled to your most serious con- sideration; you being the adopted parent of the most unfortunate of His Majesty's subjects—I mean those afflicted with insanity — I flatter myself, should I be in error, you will do me justice, and ascribe it to the right feeling—that of endeavouring to ameliorate the condition of your numerous pro- geny. You have entered the field like a true sportsman, and bagged your game, before a certain old lady would have found her Manton. The Chancery Barristers are quite in extacy at your exquisite me- thod of popping; while the grateful tear of the widow, the orphan, and even the poor maniac, will have sufficient reason to bless the day that placed them under your humane protection. Our learned medical men, and more especially those who make affliction of the mind their con- stant study, assert most positively, that almost every person afflicted with mental derangement presents a new case, but do not tell us by what means they discover a person to be of unsound mind. If it is owing to cei-tain little eccentricities which they have, and it appears to be the only rational criterion they have to judge by, then indeed might they send to confinement half the human race, for