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Abstract
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Report of a trial for Mur der, in which the culprit was defended on the ground of his labouring under Mania a potu, or Delirium from Intemperance.
James Birdsell, of the village of Harrison, in the western part of this county, on the 3d inst. was arraigned before the Supreme Court of Ohio, for homocide. Present on the bench, Judges Pease and Sherman. In the indictment it was laid, that the defendant, on Thursday evening, 5th of March, 1829, murdered his wife,by cutting through her neck from side to side, with a narrow axe, at a single blow, which severed the spinal column, and caused instant death. The proof of the fact was perfect and uncontroverted. The defence set up was Mania a potu. Having recorded the principal facts, and also been furnished with the notes of the prosecutor and one of the advocates, I propose to lay before the reader such portions of them, as have a relation to the subject of Medical Jurisprudence.
The defendant was to appearance about fifty years of age, and had been married nineteen or twenty years to a second wife,by whom he had several children, one of whom was a witness in the case. It appeared from the testimony, that for several years he had been subject to occasional fits of intoxi cation, which in the latter part of the time had been followed by Mania a potu, which generally lasted for several days and went off spontaneously. In these paroxysms he had the physical and moral symptoms which usually characterize that malady. The former were, great tremors of the hands, a pale face, red eyes, and sometimes a copious perspiration even when exposed half naked to a cold atmosphere. The moral phenomena were, disordered perceptions of sight and hearing, so that he often insisted, that he saw himself sur rounded by snakes and other reptiles, or by armed men who sought to kill him; or supposed he heard strange sounds of trumpets, or vocal music, or conversation of which he was the subject, and the object of which was mischief to himself. He was thus filled with apprehension for his safety, and some times ran about the village at night, as if attempting to es cape from bad persons who were pursuing him. On a certain night, he made so much clamour as to excite the idea of several men engaged in a riot. At another time, in his own house, he concealed himself between the feather and the straw bed, where he was almost suffocated. On another occasion, he was found, after dark, standing in the street without shoes or hat, and had described around him a circle in the dust, and declared, that if any one entered it, that person would kill him. At other times he would peep from his window, and point his gun, as for defence, against imaginary persons, who were approaching to seize him. Again, he would fancy that two armies were engaged in battle, and thaj: he must join one of them. In all his paroxysms he had so great a degree of watchfulness, as to sleep little or none for several nights in succession. But his prevailing maniacal conception was, that his wife was in a combination with three of his neighbours, one of whom was his son by a former wife, and that they had conspired against his life. Of these men, when they were not in his presence, he was afraid. In the paroxysms he wras accustomed to charge his wife (unfoundedly in the opinion of witnesses) with a criminal intimacy with these persons. He even threatened to kill her if she did not desist, and had been heard to utter this threat, when he was thought by one of the witnesses to be rational...
Language: en |