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EDWARD D. WORBRELL. 145

he does or says. Prolonged disease and extreme old age con-
tribute largely to this species of insanity. Ray says, ‘‘The
mind passes gradually from its sound and natural condition
to the enfeeblement and total extinction of its reflective pow-
era’? When we see a person greatly advanced in life, who
has lost his recollections of persons, things, dates and events,
and who in his tone, conversation and habits plays the part
of a second childhood, we say he labors under dementia,
Idiocy is characterized by the want of mental power, being
eongenital. The person comes into the world without intel-
leet and goes out of it in the same condition. He is called a
natural fool, incapable of reasoning at all.

But we must return to the subject of monomania, for it
is under the head of homicidal monomania that the defense
in this case necessarily comes. Homicidal monomania is de-
fined to be a state of partial insanity, accompanied by an irre-
sistible impulse to commit murder. It differs from mania
and other forms of insanity in this, that there is no appear-
ance of disorder of either mind or body. It cannot be traced
to any physical cause and hence the labor of the learned
eounsel to establish the existence of epilepsy in his client was
an entire waste of ammunition. The desire to Kill is sudden
and the impulse irresistible. Nearly all authors on medical
jurisprudence lay down certain tests by which the existence
of the disorder is to be ascertained, and I propose now to
apply these tests to the case of the prisoner, as the best method
of determining whether he killed Gordon by means of this
irresiatible impulse,

The first test of a homicidal monomaniac is ‘‘that he never
thas accomplices.’”’ This, I believe, is almost universally con-
ceded, and I know of no ease in the books which furnishes an
exception to the rule.

How stands the case with the prisoner at the bar? He had
an accomplice in Braff, who deserted with him from the fort,
was present aiding and abetting in the murder and fled with
him to Vineennes.

Another test is thie; ‘(A sane man always acts from real
motives, while the insane man or monomaniac ia without a

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