ART. IX.-LEGAL MEDICINE IN FRANCE. THE following are interesting as fair typical examples of the manner in which reports are furnished by medical men in France regarding the mental condition of individuals placed under their observation; and they will be found, upon examination, to leave very little to be desired. The cases in question happen to be of particular interest, and we bring them before our readers as an introduction to the third, and more important article, a medico-legal review of the numerous cases judged and dealt with by the French Courts of Assizes (during 1877), which have reference to mental alienation or nervous disorders. The suggestive nature of the latter article will be increased by consideration, in connection with it, of the present state of legal medicine in this country. ARTICLE I.-Report on the Mental state of Dominique Watrin, accused of an attempt to murder. Irresponsibility. Order for his discharge. By Drs. Giraud and Christian. WE, the undersigned, Dr. Jules Giraud, director of the asylum of Maréville, and Dr. Jules Christian, chief medical officer, requested by the Judge of the tribunal at Nancy to examine the mental state of the above-named Watrin, accused of an attempt to murder, have upon oath, soul, and conscience, written out the following report, after having investigated all the details of the procedure, and examined the delinquent: The Fact.-MEMORANDA.--On November 6, 1877, Dominique Curé, carrier at Saizerais, had come to Pont-à-Mousson, about half-past seven in the morning. After having completed his business he had started again about ten o'clock. Curé was in a cart, which he drove himself; he was accompanied by his daughter, aged fifteen, and by Lévy, a young man of seventeen, from whom he had bought a horse. When they had arrived at the forges of Pont-à-Mousson they saw an individual on the road who was armed with an iron spade, and who called out to them to stop: "If you don't stop you will be killed," he said. They paid no heed to these words, thinking they had to do with a drunkard, and continued on their way. The individual, however, began to run after the cart, which he reached again by the match factory. He first of all appeared at the horse's head, but then ran to the back of the cart, climbed upon it, and, after having taken Curé's cap off, struck him five or six blows upon the head with his iron spade. Curé fell down bathed in blood. The young girl, who tried to defend her father, screamed, and some workmen ran to help; she was, however, also wounded in the struggle. The murderer was then arrested, without making the least resistance. But when his victim had already fallen to the ground senseless, the criminal dealt him two further blows. When Watrin was arrested he had 160 francs and a gold watch and chain upon him. Such are the circumstances of the crime, as related in the depositions which the daughter of the victim and the persons who ran to her assistance made before the gensdarmes, and before the Judge of the Peace of Pont-à-Mousson. Watrin did not in the least try to defend himself, nor to deny or excuse his crime. To the judge he replied, "I own that I struck blows with the spade upon the head of the individual who was in the cart with his daughter; it is possible I may also have touched the latter. I know nothing about it." And when the magistrate asked him the motive for this brutal assault, he said: "I did not ask his permission to ride in the cart, I told him to stop his horse. I struck him because he would not obey my order to stop. I don't know the victim, I have never seen him." The interrogation continuing, the culprit began to make departures from the subject, and to speak incoherently. The next day, November 7, he appeared before the Judge of the Criminal Court, but in spite of the Judge's questions the culprit remained in absolute silence and immobility, so that the Judge was compelled to give up the examination. The singular attitude and the strange manners of the culprit caused a suspicion immediately that his mental faculties were impaired, and the investigations made by the legal authorities have all confirmed this supposition. From the inquiry made by the authorities at Metz, it appears that Dominique Watrin was born at Noisseville on January 24, 1838; that he remained unmarried, and lived with his sister. The two possessed a house, some fields and vineyards, worth altogether about 15,000 francs (£600). Besides, he was said to have deposited some 3,000 or 4,000 francs at a notary's. Mentally diseased for more than two years, he had never been dangerous. For the last three months, however, in his disease a bad change occurred. In July, and also in November he entered into the church with a hayfork to kill the curate. He had recently also behaved very violently towards other inhabitants of the parish. The mental disease of Watrin had become so evident that his sister was obliged to have him watched and to keep her own eyes upon him as much as possible. Upon several occasions, however, Watrin had successfully deceived those who watched and had started across the frontier into France. Two of these escapades are related in a a "procès-verbal" taken down by a special police commissaire of the station at Pagny sur Moselle. About two months before the crime, Watrin had arrived at Pagny from Metz, by the train at 2 P.M., with a ticket for Nancy. The commissaire, who, through the strange replies he gave, concluded that his intellectual faculties were troubled, handed him over to the care of a gendarme, with the intention of sending him back to Metz by the first train. Watrin managed to escape and ran after the train for Nancy, at the risk of being crushed by an engine, then just passing through the station. The gendarme tried to recapture him, when Watrin made an attempt to snatch the gendarme's sword away from him, and he had to be thrown to the ground before he could be entirely mastered. He was by force placed in the train which left for Metz. At the moment of starting Watrin threw on the line all the money he had in his pockets, and screamed out that it was Prussian money and that he did not want it. There was just time to pick up what he had thrown away, and it was handed back to him. During the night from December 5 to December 6 he came back to the Pagny station, and again a police inspector, finding that he had to do with a madman, led him on the road to Novéant, asking him to return home. This time again Watrin wanted to go to Nancy, where he hoped to obtain the post of "director of the Post Office." Watrin went along the road which was pointed out to him, but a few hours afterwards he came back, and then went in the direction of Pont-à-Mousson. It is probable that he passed the rest of the night wandering on the road. However, he entered a builder's yard and there took the iron spade with which he struck his victim. At the judicial inquiry the depositions of all the witnesses agree perfectly. Watrin is mentally deranged; he has been known and looked upon as such for a long time in his own parish and by all that had to do with him. Nay more, for the last three months his condition has become dangerous; he had threatened several people most gravely, he had committed acts of violence, and his sister had to have him watched. How is it to be understood that the authorities of the parish should not have intervened, that nobody should have thought of having the patient shut up, that he should have enjoyed perfect liberty. up to the very day when he committed an irreparable crime? It does not lie outside of our duties as experts to deeply deplore this culpable negligence. Direct Examination.-The direct examination of the culprit, which we continued for some time, has confirmed in every respect the results of investigations which we stated above; we were not in doubt for a moment that we had to do with a person really demented. Watrin is a short, thin, wrinkled man, with a sly and cunning expression in his face. Since his entrance into the asylum his behaviour has been invariably the same. Concentrated within himself, not speaking to anybody, not seeming to heed in the least the other patients who surround him, he generally walks about with his arms crossed, making strange gestures, posing himself into various attitudes, and very often murmuring in an undertone some unintelligible phrases. When he is under examination, he replies willingly, and his replies at first are tolerably correct. But as soon as the conversation is prolonged, or perhaps because it does not turn upon those points which preoccupy his mind most, he loses himself in interminable deviations and becomes incoherent. Of this we have proof in the numerous conversations which we have had with him. December 3, 1877. He replies correctly to the questions with regard to his age, his birthplace, &c. We ask him whether he is married; without hesitation he replies: Yes. Q. What is your wife's name? A. Madelaine St. Paul. Q. Is she from Noisseville. A. Yes. 2. Have you any children? A. No. Q. Is your wife still alive? A. I don't know whether she is still alive, but when I left Noisseville, a month ago, she was still alive. Q. Did you live happily together? A. She has chosen other men; she eats and drinks with other men. I have seen her working with them in the fields. Q. And you permitted her to do this? A. I gave her my permission? Yes, to work with other men as she pleases. Q. And you think this in order? A. She goes her way, and I go mine. With regard to his marriage his replies are always the same, and equally senseless. January 15, 1878. Q. Are you married? A. Yes, with Madelaine St. Paul; my wife is down there. Q. Since when? A. Since January 12, 1872. Q. Did you live with your wife? A. Our possessions have never been mixed, and my wife has never come to live in the house; I have never slept with my wife. Q. Why not? A. It is her religion to work with others, be it in the fields or in the house. The truth is that Watrin is not married, and that he has never been married. Madelaine St. Paul is the name of his mother, and we may be allowed to suppose that a whole series of erroneous ideas are connected with this illusion about his marriage. A proof of this is that on the day when Watrin was arrested at the Pagny station he let drop from his pocket a paper which is before us, and upon which the following is written in the writing of the accused, in unshapely letters: Je soussigné Dominique Watrin, Demeurant à Noisseville, Moselle, canton de Vigy, né le 24 janvier 1838 et marié le 12 janvier 1872 et valeur d'un bien de 8000 francs meuble (word scratched out) transportés en chemin de fer jusqu'à temps pour avoir suffi jusque la mort. Jules Watrin. It will be noticed that in this piece of writing, which is incoherent, both the idea and the date of the marriage, as having taken place on January 12, 1872, occur again, just as he gave them during the direct examinations. This is the evident proof that this idea pre-occupied him, that it had with him assumed the character of a fixed idea. Another series of ideas dominates him equally. December 3. Q. Why did you leave Noisseville? A. Ah! that's for a reason; because the territory is overrun by the Prussians; because this cannot be arranged with the French power; because there is war; because the two powers cannot arrange matters; because there is a part, separation. 2. But the war has been over a long time? A. Ah! I believe in 1869, down there, in the month of August, or September, I am not quite sure. |