Rationale of crime, and its appropriate treatment : being a treatise on criminal jurisprudence considered in relation to cerebral organization / by M.B. Sampson ; with notes and illustrations by E.W. Farnham.

  • Sampson, Marmaduke B. (Marmaduke Blake), -1876.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rationale of crime, and its appropriate treatment : being a treatise on criminal jurisprudence considered in relation to cerebral organization / by M.B. Sampson ; with notes and illustrations by E.W. Farnham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    mind. Those who are not familiar with the philosophy on which his statements are founded, will not, it is feared, he pre- pared to accede readily even to a truth expressed in terms with which they have been accustomed to associate ideas and phe- nomena so widely different as, in their minds, the disease insanity is from the tendency to crime. The discovery of the immediate and inherent connection of mind with its material instrument, has placed the question of mental tendencies, of every description, on definite and intelli- gible grounds. Impulses, desires, and acts, which before set both reason and charity at defiance, when these could examine only external causes and circumstances, are now clearly expli- cable by reference to the existence and force of internal causes. These, like all natural causes, have a certain specific and legiti- mate force—and like them, too, the effects which they produce bear a well defined relation to themselves in character. If they act, a certain effect must flow corresponding with the extent of the action; its character as inevitable in the case of the destructive, acquisitive, or combative propensities, as in that of benevolence, ideality, or justice. If an individual be so endowed with the propensities as that the natural action of his faculties leads only, or for the most part, to vice and crime, he is not yet regarded as insane, though he act in strict obedience to natural causes operating within himself. Nor is it con- ceived that, strictly speaking, he is so; since every part of his organization may be healthy, and acting with perfect fidelity to its natural constitution. There is no irregular or uncertain action. We may calculate with much exactness what effect certain causes will produce on his faculties, and what, in turn, will be the consequences of these acting outwardly upon sur- rounding objects. But, if the brain be diseased in structure,