Our Lady of Lourdes - Fifth Book - Part 12

    
  IN the immense arsenal of our laws and regulations, there is one formidable weapon provided, as we think, somewhat imprudently, with the very praiseworthy intention of protecting an individual against himself, but which―should it chance to fall into the hands of malice and blind hatred―may give rise to the most frightful of all tyrannies;  we mean the arbitrary sequestration―against which there is no power of appeal―of an innocent person.  We would be understood to allude to the law regarding insanity.  Without public discussion, or the possibility of making any defense, on the certificate of one or two medical men, declaring him to be laboring under mental alienation, an unfortunate wretch may be seized suddenly, by a simple measure of the Administration, and thrown into the most horrible of prisons―into the dungeon of a mad-house.  We believe, and we are under the necessity of believing, that, in the majority of cases, this law is equitably applied, in consequence of the general feeling of honor and the capacity of the medical body.  But, we are at a loss to understand how this feeling of honor and this medical knowledge can   afford just reasons for suppressing all means of defense, all publicity, and all opportunity of appeal:  that the decision, with closed doors, of two medical men, should be exempted from this triple guarantee with which the Law has seen right to surround the judgments pronounced by the Magistracy.  The members of the medical profession are, doubtless, well skilled in their art, and we acknowledge that the fact of finding two of them perfectly agreed in opinion, renders the truth of their common thesis sufficiently probable;  but, is there in this proceeding a certitude sufficiently grave, sufficiently evident, sufficiently clear―if we may be permitted to employ a pleonasm of this nature―to confer irrevocably the right of depriving, without other form of procedure, a citizen of his liberty?  That medical men are actuated by a high sense of honor is equally beyond a doubt, and no one has a greater veneration than ourselves for members of their profession;  but, may not―more especially in cases of mental alienation―their preconceived ideas and philosophical doctrines sometimes incline their minds, in spite of themselves, towards very deplorable errors?  One of them, M. Lélut, in a publication which has gained a certain celebrity, has ranked amongst the deranged, Socrates, Newton, Saint Theresa, Pascal, and a host of others, who, like the former, were the glory of Humanity.  Would, for instance, such a Master and his pupils deserve to be invested with the right of shutting up as maniacs, without any opposing evidence, without publicity and without appeal, merely after a simple consultation, all those whom they should regard as such?  And yet, M. Lélut is a man of remarkable learning and a medical celebrity;  he is a member of the Institute.  What can we say of the guarantee offered by the mob of practitioners ―by some of those wretched little village doctors who have succeeded to the Barber-Surgeons, with whom our ancestors were perfectly satisfied.
  Convinced as he was of the absolute impossibility of the Supernatural, Baron Massy, observing the incapacity of action to which the Magistracy was reduced, hesitated not to seek for a solution of the extraordinary question, which had so suddenly arisen in his department, in calling this terrible law to his assistance.