"Frederick Powell Sr" <powell@closecall.com> wrote: >Listmembers, does the definition of "being a lunatic" in 1844 >indicate the individual, so described, suffered from a form of >mental instability/illness? I ask the question knowing that in >years gone by consumption might have referred to present day >diagnosis of tuberculosis. > >In other words, did lunacy in 1844 mean the same as it does today? Basically, yes. It was the current medical term for what later became known as mental illness or mental disorder. It survived much longer in legal use than among the medical profession, though. There was a distinction in England, which may well have existed elsewhere, between a lunatic "so found", which meant a person formally adjudged to be so by a court, and a lunatic "not so found", who would be dealt with informally by their family and the doctors. Of course, it was not a very precise term, and many people described as lunatics in the 19th century would now be identified as suffering from something more specific, which might be physical as much as mental; porphyria is a well-known example. -- Don Aitken Don Aitken <don-aitken@freeuk.com>