HOMICIDAL MANIA. This is the mononumie mearbrare of the French. There is developed, under certain morbid conditions, a blind, irresistible tendency to destroy life. It is independent of hatred, or any appreciable incentive; and even acts in opposi lion to the general disposition, the interests, and the affections of the perpetrator. Dr. Otto of Copenhagen has recorded a series of motiveless murders. Georget gives the case of M. N., who was silent and solitary, but reasonable, and confessed a desire to shed blood, and particularly that of his mother and sister by poniard. He deplored the dreadful tendency, for he loved them both tenderly. Yet the fit returned, and he cried out: Mother, save thyself, or I will cut your throat!" The victim selected is most frequently a child, a wife, a benefactor, or no object of love and respect. Hoffbauer, in Germany; Esquirol, Marc, Foville, in France; and Conolly, in Britain, have all demonstrated, and in criminal courts have testified to, the existence of this form of mental disease and ground of irresponsibility; but no recognition has been obtained of the irresistible, motiveless homicidal tendency as a bar to trial or to punishment. The impulse, however, is manifested in a more complicated form. It may originate in delu sions; and the act which first reveals the mental condition may be committed in sup posed self-defense, or to secure the salvation or prevent the suffering of the individual destroyed. Such manifestation may constitute the characteriStic symptom of furious
madness, where the excited maniac sacrifices all around, or all who resist his course, under the instigation of the predominating passion, or of melancholia and despondency. There occur periods when the tendency to shed blood becomes epidemic or imitative. There is in many natures an ill-defined satisfaction on hearing of slaughter, wars, and atrocities; and such details, or the sight of blood, are said to be suggestive of this ten dency. :Mare states that six cases of infanticide followed immediately upon the publica tion of the trial and history of Henriette Cornier, who cut off the head of her child. The puerperal condition, various hereditary tendencies, powerful moral impressions, and atmospherical influences are conceived to induce this tendency. The proximate cause is generally found to cousist in marked organic changes in the nervous system, such as are detectable in epilepsy; or in the more insidious and obscure structural alterations which are supposed to accompany perverted and depraved instincts; although homi cidal mania may occur independently of either of these pathological conditions.
Esquirol, Des Maladies Mentales, t. ii. p. 115; Marc, De la Folie, etc., t. ii. p. 24; Yellowlees, Ilainicidal Mania, Edinburgh Medical Journal, Aug., 1862.