SOME VIEWS 
ON 
INSANITY. 
BY 
GEORGE M. CURTIS, Esq 
NEWYORK. 
1889. THE LAW AND TRADE PRINTING COMPANY, 
7, 9 AND II NEW CHAMBERS ST., 
NEW YORK. SOME VIEWS ON INSANITY, 
GEORGE M. CURTIS. 
I think it will be conceded by the most eminent men- 
tal alienists that insanity is growing annually more fre- 
quent in this country, and I attribute this largely to the 
great increase of wealth among the mass of the people 
and the facilities that it gives for dissipation and sensual 
enjoyments. Then, too, there are the excessive use of 
alcoholic stimulants, and the increased mental activity 
demanded by the competition in the various branches of 
business and in the learned professions. It is undoubt- 
edly true that some of the severest types of insanity are 
caused by excessive indulgence,—by a violation of the 
seventh command. The present system of incarcerating 
alleged lunatics is one that should be altered by the leg- 
islative power of the commonwealth. To illustrate :if 
a man is on trial for his life, charged with a capital 
offence, and the defence is insanity, he must prove in the 
most overwhelming manner by a cloud of witnesses, 
that at the time the offence was committed he was 
legally irresponsible for his act. On the contrary, if a 
conspiracy be entered into between malicious or inter- 
ested persons to obtain the control of the property and to 
seize the person of another, two physicians, perhaps un- 
able to diagnose a case of fever, can start the machinery 
•of the law in motion, place a man in a lunatic asylum, 
and before he can be legally rescued he may become mad 
in point of fact by reason of his troubles, the mental 
strain upon him, and the actual contact with the insane. 
The natural and rational remedy suggested by this state 
of affairs is obvious. I would have a commission ere- 4 
VIEWS ON INSANITY". 
ated by law of such men as Dr. Allen McLane Hamilton,. 
Dr. M. P. Field, Dr. McDonald and Dr. Chalmers, before- 
whom in the first instance, all applications to confine 
persons as lunatics and to place guardianship or control 
over their property, should be submitted. These Com- 
missioners should have the full power of the Supreme- 
Court in the premises, with authority to send for and 
examine all persons interested in favor of the application, 
likewise those opposed to it, and upon their final deter- 
mination, aided by the expert testimony of their own 
profession, the destiny of the alleged lunatic should de- 
pend in the first instance. This suggestion is by no* 
means intended to convey the idea that the alleged luna- 
tic could constitutionally be deprived of his right of trial 
by jury, guaranteed to him by the organic law of the 
land ; the object of it is, to call attention to the natural" 
and legal sa reguards which should be thrown around the 
mode and motives of his original incarceration. I do 
not think that any objection to this system could be well 
founded upon the suggestion,- that the business of the 
Commissioners would be so great as to prevent their 
fully attending to it; but if such should be the fact, ad- 
ditional Commissioners of the same high mental and 
professional grade as those to whom I have referred, 
could be appointed. It will be observed that the ques- 
tion of insanity enters very largely into the administra- 
tion of public justice in this country, particularly in 
criminal jurisprudence and the settlement of will con- 
tests, where it is alleged that the decedent had not tes- 
tamentary capacity. Most of the wills are contested and 
fought upon the ground either of undue influence, or 
want of testamentary capacity, or both. The first 
ground, to some extent, is intimately connected with the 
second, and is resultant of it. In this State the leaning 
of the courts is strongly in favor of upholding wills as 
made, unless they are upon their face extravagant, 
illegal or absurd and so far has this doctrine gone that 
it is held in this and other States that a man is com- 
petent to make a will even if he is insane in some direc- 
tion, providing it appears that in relation to the will VIEWS ON INSANITY. 
5 
itself and its provisions, his mind is clear and normal. 
or instance: A man’s mind may be unbalanced in cer- 
tain directions and in reference to certain subjects, and 
still be healthy and normal in relation to the disposition 
■of his property. At one time it was rather doubted that 
a person who believed in Spiritualism was capable of 
making a will that would stand the legal test. This, 
however, is not the law. 
Spiritualism may, or may not be a delusion, but a per- 
son who believes in it is not, and cannot be regarded by 
the law as insane. It is looked upon, so far as the legal 
principle is concerned, as a religious belief. A person 
may have sane and insane delusions in regard to Spiritu • 
alisra as in regard to any other subject matter. Sane 
■delusions are those out of which one may be reasoned. 
Insane delusions are those of which one’s mental capa- 
city cannot divest itself. The most familiar and striking 
illustration of Spiritualism entertained as a belief by an 
undoubtedly sane mind, is that of a most eminent advo- 
cate of the highest culture, of the greatest legal attain- 
ments and the most lovely personal character, who has 
recently appeared as the eloquent and able champion of 
this belief. 
Said Galileo : “ The world moves ; ” and in this same 
spirit of progress the treatment of the insane in the last 
one hundred years has been revolutionized. As late as 
a century ago, not only in this country, but in England, 
the insane were confined more as malefactors than as 
medical patients, and as a rule were restrained in cells, 
and often chained to the floor That the present intent 
of the constituted authorities in the different States is to 
ameliorate the condition of the insane and to restore 
them by kind treatment to their normal mental condition, 
is beyond doubt, but all systems thus far devised have 
had grevious defects, A conspicuous one is in the char- 
acter of the attendants who are selected to watch over 
the patients. Of course for these positions one cannot 
obtain men of culture or a high grade of mental ability, 
and the consequence is, that the inevitable out-bursts of 
omotion on the part of the insane are too often met by 6 
VItWS ON INSANITY. 
violence and brutality on the part of attendants of both 
sexes. Where this occurs one sees at once the radical 
impossibility of effecting a change in the mind of a pa- 
tient, who, for the purposes of a cure, should be treated 
with kindness and forbearance. To remedy this, a higher 
order of men and women should be enlisted in the service 
of the hospitals. I have no doubt that the leading physi- 
cians in all our institutions are high minded and honor- 
able men, who do their duty thoroughly and cheerfully, 
but they cannot be held responsible for the acts of bru 
tality of their subordinates. One thing in the treatment 
of the insane in lunatic asylums should be carefully 
supervised, and that is the question of diet. There is an 
intimate and positive relation between the physical and 
mental condition of the patient. This part of the duty 
of subordinates is too often criminally neglected. ’Tis 
undoubtedly true that many sane persons are confined 
in lunatic asylums, and the chief cause of this lament- 
able fact is, that the diagnosis of their cases is too often 
made by incompetent physicians, who know nothing of 
the subject of mental alienation. 
I remember a case in which I was called on to examine 
a young physician vho undertook to give evidence as an 
expert. His cross-examination developed the fact that 
he was entirely ignorant of even the fundamental prin- 
ciples of his profession, and yet this man had signed the 
certificate that the respondent was insane. It is un- 
doubtedly true that the medical profession itself furnishes 
very few experts who have even the semblance of 
knowledge of the subject of mental alienation. The 
cause of this is, that their time being given to general 
practice, they have no opportunity to give a proper study 
to this specialty, and the result is that hundreds and 
hundreds of sane men and women are incarcerated 
yearly in lunatic asylums, and their property diverted 
and destroyed. To illustrate this last observation: peo- 
ple at different times have successfully simulated in- 
sanity, having a purpose to serve by doing so. This may 
be done even in the presence of an able physician, who 
gives, in the hurry of the moment, but a superficial ex- VIEWS ON INSANITY. 
animation ; but it could never succeed when the exam- 
iner is competent, and has ample time and opportunity 
in which to continue his investigation. It is clear that 
while the intent of the law and its administration are 
correct, the practical workings are inoperative and often- 
times unjust. 
One of the most remarkable causes in which the de- 
fense of insanity has ever been pleaded was that of the 
Commonwealth vs. Buford, tried in Owenton, Kentucky, 
in the year 1879. The defendant was a man of remark- 
able natural abilities, of an historic family and of daunt- 
less personal courage. He was a great student of the 
Bible, a fine political speaker and his knowledge of the 
political history of his country was surpassed by no man 
that I ever knew with the exception, possibly, of Stephen 
A. Douglass. The religious traits in his character were 
conspicuous. He believed, in the language of one of the 
witnesses on the trial, in the self-evident truths of 
Christianity, in the manifest beauties and conceptions of 
the Sermon on the Mount. He loved to read the Book 
of Joh, which Daniel Webster declared as an epic poem 
to be superior to the Iliad or Odyssey of Homer. He 
delighted in reading the Psalms ; he rejoiced in the Book 
of Revelations. Yet this character, so bountifully en- 
dowed by nature [and chartered by Deity to accom- 
plish great results, was a life failure. In a moment of 
vengeance he Aipon Chief Justice Elliott, of the 
Court of Appeals of the State of Kentucky, his disap- 
pointed malice and slew that brilliant jurist almost in 
the Temple of the Law. 
The immediate moral motive power of the act was a 
decision rendered by the Court of Appeals, of which 
Judge Elliott was the mouth-piece, adverse to the inter- 
ests and claims of Colonel Buford in an important litiga- 
tion. 
There could, of course, be but one defense and that of 
insanity, interposed to save the scion of an illustrious 
house from the ignominy of the gibbet. That defense 
was insanity, and there is but little doubt remaining in 
my mind that the defense which was set up in his case- 8 
VIEWS ON INSANITY. 
was justified by the facts and by the personal history of 
the defendant subsequent to his acquittal. 
It was proven on the trial of his case by the evidence 
of Mrs. Merriwether, that he was, beyond controversy, 
the victim of hallucination. She states in her testi- 
mony that she was for many years acquainted with Col- 
onel Buford, that he often came to her house, that he 
frequently stayed there for a night, and she narrates one 
or moie occasions on which, hearing him walking on the 
corridor, she got out of bed, put on her clothing and went 
up to where he was passing to and fro, up and down, talk- 
ing, mumbling, cursing, muttering to himself, and she 
inquired the reason of his unrest; and this memorable 
answer was given, that he had been in communication 
with his sister’s spirit, and he frequently declared to Mrs. 
Merriwether that he both saw and communed with his sis- 
ter. Perhaps it is unnecessary to state, in point of fact, that 
the sister to whom he referred had been dead for many 
years at the time spoken of. But that Colonel Buford 
believed that he had direct communication with the spirit 
of his departed sister, and that that communication had 
a real and positive effect upon the acts of his life, was 
proven beyond any reasonable doubt. 
The whole doctrine in that case contended for on the 
part of the accused was, perhaps, to an extent, presented 
to the jury in the following language, made use of by 
me in my argument for the defendant: 
“ 1 do not contend, gentlemen of the jury, that a slight 
departure from the ordinary conduct of an individual, or 
an eccentricity, as it may be termed, constitutes or typi- 
fies the condition of mental unsoundness. Acts of eccen- 
tricity in themselves are but rivulets that feed the mighty 
stream of madness, bat in this case we have proven that 
the great central idea in the dominion of Buford’s mind 
was that he had been wronged, pillaged and despoiled, 
and around the central delusion of his mind, with faci- 
nating, hideous planetary regularity, revolved all the 
conceptions of his soul; and when he saw by the last ad- 
veise decision of the-Court of Appeals his last hope on 
earth disappear, his mental battalions broke in panic and VIEWS ON INSANITY. 
9 
•dissolved. Then came the cataract of the frenzy that 
•overthrew the will power ; then came with its resistless 
rush that stream of frenzy that carried to death and 
eternity the life of Judge Elliott; that startled all man- 
kind with a tragic horror unexampled in the history of 
the jurisprudence of the world.” 
Colonel Buford was finally acquitted by a jury and 
died in the lunatic asylum at Anchorage, near Louisville, 
Ky., of confirmed paresis. 
Another very remarkable case is that of Dr. Henry T. 
Helmbold, a character very well known in this country 
and abroad twenty years ago. He was born in the City 
of Philadelphia and was a chemist by profession. He 
prepared a very successful specific known as “Helm- 
bold’s Buchu,” and by his energy and sagacity he founded 
a business that extorted revenue from all the nations of 
the earth that brought him a golden harvest as the re- 
ward of a commercial enterprise so broad, liberal and 
comprehensive that, while it had its origin in the Great 
Republic, it lost not sight of the remoter realms of China 
and the people dwelling on the banks of the Ganges. 
His income for many successive years was in the neigh- 
borhood of half a million dollars. Yet this man has 
passed a great portion of his life in insane asylums in this 
country and abroad. He married some twenty-five years 
ago one of the most beautiful women of her country and 
her time. So conspicuous was her loveliness that in Paris 
she was hailed by its discerning people as the Queen of 
Beauty. 
Dr. Helmbold’s insanity was and is of a peculiar type. 
When sober and unexcited by the influence of alcohol, 
he is a profound, shrewd man of business, making con- 
tracts advantageous to himself and conceiving business 
plans thai have brought golden results. He was, it can 
be said with great confidence, the father, inventor and 
founder of that stupendous and costly system of adver- 
tising in which, during the last twenty-five years, he has 
been so largely imitated by A. T. Stewart, P. H. Drake, 
Demas Barnes, Dr. Schenck and others. When under 
the influence of liquor, he seemed mentally to be entirely 10 
VIEWS ON INSANITY. 
transformed, and became the victim of many painful 
hallucinations. Perhaps the explanation of this marked 
distinction of conduct is to be found in the fact that alco- 
hol developed a latent and hereditary predisposition to 
insanity. 
I appeared for him in very many important civil con- 
troversies relating to his business, trade-mark and pro- 
prietary rights, and in all these I was struck with his 
remarkable intelligence and natural clearness of mind. 
It was only under the influence of liquor that his normal 
mental characteristics of strength and brilliancy seemed 
to capitulate. I had the good fortune to be successful in 
several efforts made to secure his liberation from insane 
asylums and the Doctor is now living happily and con- 
tented with his lovely wife and interesting children at 
her beautiful country place in this State. 
Very few of our citizens of the present generation will 
forget what is known in medico-legal jurisprudence as 
the Rhinelander Case. In the Summer of 1884, the com- 
munity was startled by the report that John Drake, an 
able and experienced lawyer, had been shot in his office 
by William Rhinelander, a scion of the house of that 
name. The wealth, social and pecuniary influence of 
the Rhinelanders were invoked to shield the young man 
from the consequences of his act by the plea of insanity. 
He, however, absolutely justified it upon the ground 
that Drake had attempted to alienate the affections of his 
wife from him, and had persisted in this course after he 
had warned the lawyer to depart from his alleged vicious 
ways. I am constrained to say that throughout this 
whole investigation, which was very lengthy and tedious, 
there was no positive evidence presented of the guilt of 
Mr. Drake, and I cheerfully pay this tribute to his mem- 
ory as an act of justice, because, at the time I made the 
argument for young Rhinelander, I entertained some- 
what of a different view, based upon his assertions and 
the facts and data which were grouped around the 
hearing. 
The family to which Rhinelander belonged was a very 
opulent one, owning a vast amount of real estate in the VIEWS ON INSANITY. 
11 
heart of the metropolis, exercising great social influence 
and enjoying great social prestige. The effort on their 
part was to show that the defendant, William Rhine- 
lander, had a homicidal mania, and if he was not re- 
strained in the control of his person or his conduct he 
would undoubtedly himself or some other individual. 
The true condition of Rhinelander’s mind, on the evi- 
dence, seems to have been that of a highly cultured, in- 
telligent person, with a woeful perversion of the will 
power, and obstinate to the last degree. And so it was 
that, when his relatives objected to his alliance with 
Mary McGninness, who was a serving woman in the fam- 
ily, he immediately married that lady. It is with great 
pleasure that I state that Mrs. Rhinelander was, and is,, 
a lady of modesty, irreproachable conduct and respect- 
able lineage. 
Two of the Commissioners appointed by the Court to- 
inquire into the sanity of William Rhinelai:der, reported 
him insane ; the third, the Hon. Edward Patterson, pro- 
nounced him, for all the purposes of the law and the sci- 
entific principle, a sane man, and his view, which was 
most ably expressed in his opinion, was that afterwards 
adopted by Recorder Smyth, before whom the matter 
came in the channel of appeal. Recorder Smyth gave to 
this cise the great benefit of his exhaustless energy, pro- 
found learning and strict integrity, and the fact that 
young Rhinelander is at large to-day is due to the con- 
scientious investigation which the Recorder gave to the 
voluminous evidence and complicated questions of law 
presented in the record of this cause celebre. 
The Anderson Will Case seems to have revolutionized 
the law applicable to testamentary contests. John An- 
derson was an old citizen of New York, and at the time- 
of his decease had accumulated a large fortune, variouslv 
estimated, but which, on the best authority, seems to- 
have consisted, in real and personal property, of about 
two and a half millions of dollars. He devised the bulk 
of his fortune to his son, John Charles Anderson, and 
what is known as the Anderson Will Case was an at- 
tempt on the part of his grand-danghter, Mary Maud 12 
VIEWS OX INSANITY. 
Watson, to defeat the devise of his son, John Charles. 
In this case I represented Mrs. Watson, and was opposed 
by a most formidable bar, of whom the leaders were ex- 
Recorder Smith and ex-Judge Arnoux, 
These two eminent nisi prius lawyers were assisted by 
a strong array of the best conveyancing talent in the 
United States. I fought the case on two grounds : First, 
want of testamentary capacity on the part of the dece- 
dent ; second, undue influence exercised upon and over 
the decedent by those interested to procure the testament 
in dispute. There were two trials of this case. On the 
first, the very able and experienced Judge who presided, 
after the plaintiff had submitted her case, and after giv- 
ing the question an exhaustive consideration, dismissed 
the complaint upon the ground, substantially, that under 
the law of this State it had not been established prima 
facie by the plaintiff upon all the proof presented that 
the decedent was a person of unsound mind. I took an 
appeal to the General Term of the Supreme Court, and 
that tribunal, after giving months of consideration to 
the case, came to the conclusion that it was the right of 
the plaintiff to go to the jury upon the evidence she had 
presented on the first trial, and, therefore, ordered a new 
hearing. It was a very close question, and it is impos- 
sible to decide how the Court of Appeals would have 
passed upon it, because the defendants, instead of taking 
an appeal to that tribunal, invoked the destinies of a new 
trial. 
The contestant sought to prove that the decedent’s 
mind had become weakened to such an extent by a be- 
lief in a communication with the spirits of the departed 
that it was easily susceptible to influence, and in that 
■condition was acted upon by persons antagonistic in in- 
terest to Mrs. Watson, themselves the beneficiaries 
■under the will ; and still 1 believe that if the defendants 
had not put a witness upon the stand they would have 
won the case on the second trial. They supplied evi- 
dence that was wanting to support the allegation of un- 
due influence. 
The action brought was one in ejectment against John VIEWS ON INSANITY. 
13 
D. Phyfe and James Campbell, they claiming under a. 
deed from John Charles Anderson, the chief beneficiary 
under the will. The reply to this set up want of testa- 
mentary capacity and undue influence, as I have stated. 
After a long trial, occupying over a month, the jury 
found a verdict for Mrs. Watson. 
The last case to which I will call attention in this paper 
is that of Harriet Elizabeth Coffin. On her mother’s 
side she is the grand-daughter of the late Commodore 
Collins ; on her father’s side, the grand-child of the late 
Judge Coffin of Cincinnati. She had all the advantages 
that wealth, culture and affection could bestow upon her, 
and she is naturally a person of more than mediocre 
ability. She was sent to me by an eminent mental alien- 
ist, with a request that I would see that her legal rights 
were protected in a litigation that was then impending, 
for the purpose of restraining her personal liberty and 
taking the care and custody of her property. 
Her physical diagnosis, when I first saw her, can be- 
stated about as follows; She was of the nervous, san- 
guine temperament, dark eyes and hair, and would have 
been extremely prepossessing in appearance but for an 
unsightly eruption upon the skin of the face, caused, un- 
doubtedly, by some irregularity or disease of the liver. 
She had something of that appearance which is observ- 
able in sufferers from Bright’s disease, in the initial 
stages of that terrible disorder. She was highly nervous 
and excitable, but no positive trace of mental alienation 
could be discovered, except in one direction. She had a 
passionate, almost abnormal affection for a popular play- 
actor, Mr. Kyrle Belle vv, a gentleman whom she had 
never met and whom she had only seen upon the stage 
and in the street. There is but very little question that 
upon the subject of Kyrle Bellew she was unbalanced, 
but it did not seem to affect the strength of her general 
faculties, because in a business direction she was emi- 
nently shrewd and practical, taking great care of her 
own person, its safety, and also being successfully soli- 
citous about her money. 
Proceedings, however, were taken against her to ad- VIEWS ON INSANITY. 
judge her a lunatic, and the trial was had before the Hon. 
John H. Judge and Dr. Chalmers, who sat with a sher- 
iff’s jury to hear the cause. Certainly, on the evidence 
submitted at that hearing, Miss Coffin was a sane 
woman, so far as the legal and scientific principle are 
concerned, but Judge Barrett, in a review of the case, 
warmly criticised the action of the jury and intimated 
that their decision was not based upon a sound and 
proper construction of the evidence before them, and he 
gave the petitioners the right to bring the cause on again 
for trial if they saw fit to do so. They took no advan- 
tage, however, of this privilege, and the case of Miss 
Coffin seemed to have passed out of public recollection, 
when interest in her was again revived by some extra- 
ordinary and eccentric acts on her part in relation to Mr, 
Bellew and another person. She was again apprehended, 
and this time I refused to appear for her, because I did 
not wish to take upon myself the responsibility, even if 
that should have been the result of my labors of turning 
her loose upon society and against herself. She was sent, 
I believe, to the insane asylum at Middletown, where she 
now is. 
At the time I first saw her she was certainly curable. 
All that she needed was absolute quiet and rest, change 
of scene, a voyage abroad, specific treatment for the 
liver and the nerves, and in a very short time, I have no 
doubt, she would have been restored to perfect health. 
Her mother, instead of taking proper’ advice on this sub- 
ject, permitted her to roam about at will near the scene 
of excitement and the result was as stated. 
It is a matter of profound satisfaction to those inter- 
ested in the subject of mental alienation that our judges 
are more and more exhibiting a disposition to master the 
topic of insanity. Judge Lawrence, who presided on the 
second trial of the Anderson Will Case, developed a 
knowledge of this interesting question, so profound and 
varied, that it challenged the attention of all connected 
with the cause. The spectacle of this superb nisi prius 
judge, learned, courteous and impartial, holding firmly 
the scales between the parties to this important contro- VIEWS ON INSANITY. 
15 
versy, deciding instanter the most complicated questions 
of law and medical jurisprudence, patient to forbearance, 
yet stern in justice and the administration of the law, 
will never pass from the recollection of those who be- 
held it. 
Geo. M. Curtis.