A TREATISE ON INSANITY AND OTHER DISORDERS AFFECTING THE MIND

Octavo. iv (publisher ads), 337, [1 (blank)], [2 (ads)], 8 (ads) pp. First American edition. Bound in contemporary speckled calf with brown morocco title label on the spine. Spine ends are a trifled rubbed; front cover has been discreetly and professionally reattached; rear joint shows some separation to the leather, but it remains solid; corners are a bit frayed. Irregular toning to the contents, one leaf has a missing top corner (affecting only the empty margin) and there is a closed tear to the bottom of a blank preliminary leaf. A reasonably nice copy, all in all. "Prichard, better known for his work in the field of anthropology, was the first describe moral insanity. This first appeared in the Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine (J. Forbes), London, 1833-35, 2, pp. 12 and was afterwards enlarged." Garrison & Morton 4928. Also published in the same year by E.L. Carey & A. Hart of Philadelphia, no priority established. "An invitation to write an article on insanity in the Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine led him to pursue the subject, and to publish in 1835 his Treatise on Insanity and other Disorders affecting the Mind. This was long the standard work on this branch of medicine. Its leading interest lies in the assertion of the existence of a distinct disease of 'moral insanity.' This malady Prichard claims to have been the first to recognize and describe. He sought to prove that moral insanity was a morbid condition, not necessarily the concomitant or outcome of mental disorder or incapacity. He pointed out that there are patients truly insane and irresponsible, who suffer from moral defect or derangement, without such an amount of intellectual disorder as would be legally recognized either in a court of law or for the purpose of certification. He showed that madness often consisted 'in a morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses, without any remarkable disorder or defect of the intellect or knowing and reasoning faculties, and particularly without any insane illusion or hallucination.' In face of the generally accepted view of the solidarity of the mental functions, the difficulty of accepting Prichard's doctrine is, from a psychological point of view, not inconsiderable. But despite the warm contests that have taken place in regard to Prichard's conclusion among both lawyers and physicians, his position has been confirmed by subsequent observers, and is accepted by leading scientific men in Europe and the United States. Esquirol, who at first opposed Prichard's views, was obliged, as he soon admitted, 'to submit to the authority of facts" (DNB). "It was Prichard who first put at the center of the psychiatric map the many mental disorders which reveal themselves only by disturbances of affect and behavior and which had been largely neglected at the periphery it was a considerable advance, almost revolutionary, to equate with insanity proper cases without those twin features delusions and hallucinations which had long been and indeed still are considered the hallmark of the mad, and without that deprivation of the use of reason from which it was inseparable in law Prichard's 'moral insanity' was the first psychiatric diagnosis which became the subject of controversy not only because of its novelty and ill-defined boundaries but because it implied a specific lesion of the mind Today when the whole question of criminal responsibility is under review, Prichard's work has gained renewed importance in such concepts as diminished responsibility and irresistible impulse" (Hunter & MacAlpine, Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry, 836-8).…