174 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

142 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

has treated epilepsy very frequently, and states that a long
attack with short intervals will result in loss of memory and
the power to reason, and the mind will gradually sink into
imbecility and idiocy—has known one instance in which the
person had fits at intervals of one month, from early child-
hood to 25 years of age, without impairing the mind at all.
He thinks it would require a duration of five years, with in-
tervals of but a few days, to prodnee even imbecility.

How absurd then, gentlemen, to suppose that the prisoner,
who wag exempt from any attack for four years immediately
preceding the homicide, and who, to give him the benefit of
every supposition, reasonable and unreasonable, that the evi-
dence furnishes, can only point to five attacks in a period
of seven years, has sustained any mental injury. The world
has furnished innumerable examples of men who, though epi-
leptie, have become distinguished in science and the various
departments of literature.

History records the fact that Cmsar and Napoleon Bona-
parte were epileptic, yet one conquered the world, and the
other by force of mind and military genius, brought the old
world monarchies of Europe supplicating at his feet.

‘We have now, gentlemen of the jury, reached that part of
the counsel’s argument, at which he first gave us to understand
what peculiar phase of insanity his client labored under at
the time of the homicide. In his speech he sometimes called
it homicidal mania, and at other times homicidal monomania,
complicated with epilepsy. The latter, I presume, is what he
really means, for no other species of insanity would be appli-
table to his theory of defense. To properly understand this
condition of the mind, it is important to know how medical
jurists have classified the different degrees of insanity. Tay-
lor, Esquirol and others have treated it under four different
forms: Mania, monomania, dementia and idiocy, and this
classification has been universally adopted for its convenience
and perspicuity. Ray, it is true, speaks of other kinds, such
as intellectual and moral insanity, but his claasification is too
complicated to be of much practical use in the administration
of the law. Mania, as defined by Taylor is that form of in-