The trial of Charles Julius Guiteau for the murder of President
Garfield in 1881 is today almost forgotten. In this carefully
documented book, subtitled Psychiatry and Law in the Gilded Age, a
medical historian writes of crime and trial, and contrasts American
psychiatry of the time with today's ideas. The murder stemmed from
a split in the Republican party which the president, Garfield, a
stout, bearded nonentity of "average probity" was unable to heal.
Guiteau, his assassin, a fanatical Republican, believed that God
wanted him to reunite the Republicans by killing Garfield, which he
did on July 2, 1881, shooting the president in the back in a
Washington railway station: surrendering at once, he declared he
had committed no crime as his action was dictated by God. On
September 19 Garfield died. Guiteau, termed a monster of vice,
would today be considered a paranoid schizophrenic and never
brought to trial, but in 1881 the country demanded that he hang and
the Washington district attorney was happy to oblige. The trial
turned into a tourist attraction. Witnesses for the prosecution,
insane asylum super-intendents, quoted the "McNaughten Rule" as
proof of Guiteau's sanity and guilt; doctors of a new school called
"neurologists" testified that as a victim of heredity insanity
Guiteau was insane and without "criminal responsibility." With this
statement Guiteau, his own assistant counsel, disagreed violently,
contending that he was sane and guided only by God, lecturing
everyone and disrupting the proceedings.... A solid, factual book,
primarily for doctors, medical and legal historians, rather than
the average reader and fully substantiated with notes and index.
(Kirkus Reviews)
In this brilliant study, Charles Rosenberg uses the celebrated
trial of Charles Guiteau, who assassinated President Garfield in
1881, to explore insanity and criminal responsibility in the Gilded
Age. Rosenberg masterfully reconstructs the courtroom battle waged
by twenty-four expert witnesses who represented the two major
schools of psychiatric thought of the generation immediately
preceding Freud. Although the idea that genetics could play a role
in behavior was just beginning to take hold in their day, these
psychiatrists fiercely debated whether heredity had predisposed
Guiteau to assassinate Garfield. Rosenberg's account allows us to
consider one of the classic moments in the controversy over the
criminal responsibility of the insane, a debate that still rages
today.
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