Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917-01-01 edition. Excerpt: ...of the alienist the world of criminal facts cannot be divided fairly. The detective may bring out much evidence which lies outside of the realm of physicians, which yet may be a closed book to the naive view of psychical life. In such case the psychologist feels it his duty fearlessly to oppose the popular prejudice. Just this was the situation when I ventured last year to write a letter to a well-known nerve specialist in Chicago who had privately asked my opinion as a psychologist in the case of a man condemned to death for murder. The man had confessed the crime. Yet I felt sure that he was innocent. My letter somehow reached the papers and I became the target for editorial sharpshooters everywhere. I have before me still a collection of such specimens. "Harvard's Contempt of Court" is the big heading here, " Science Gone Crazy" the heading there, and so it went on in the papers, while every mail brought an epistolary chorus. The efforts of the attorneys to change the condemned man's fate by a motion for a supersedeas before the Supreme Court were unsuccessful. One week later the accused was hanged; yet, if scientific conviction has the right to stand frankly for the truth, I have to say again that he was hanged for a crime of which he was no more guilty than you or I, and the only difference which the last few months have brought about is the fact that, as I have been informed on good authority, the most sober-minded people of Chicago to-day share this sad opinion. I felt sure from the first that no one was to be blamed. Court and jury had evidently done their best to find the facts and to weigh the evidence; they are not to be expected to be experts in the analysis of unusual mental states. The proof of the alibi seemed...
