OCR Text |
Show The Alleged Justification of Violence. The public is gratified to learn by the report of the Governor's investigation, that the alleged abuses in the Trovo asylum do not exist at least, not in the degree (charged by Marine, the insane epileptic. Such charges and investigations are common in all parts of the country. To establish the truth of charges in such cases is extremely difficult. The guilty attendants will rarely testify adversely to their own interests, and the testimony of the' insane patients is, by the very fact of their insanity, impeached im-peached ab initio. So that practically it amounts to Jin ex paite hearing. It is child's play, of course, to cite the humane rules of the Provo asylum management manage-ment as presumptive evidence or a guaranty that the inmates are well treated. The rules are one thing, their operation quite another. It would be an unheard of thing, in this enlightened age, to find an absence of rules as good as or better than those of the Provo asylum. The chief evidence that was worth anything was the testimony of Night Watchman Watch-man (iatherAi himself, who said he struck the epileptic Marine, in self-defense. It is remarkable that an intdTfgent body of investigators, headed bj' the Governor, who ought to be familiar with medical jurisprudence, should justify this blow, or in the words of the report, "that the violence vio-lence us?d by Gatherum was justifiable and clearly in self-defense.' No respectable alienist can be found in any institution in AYnerica, who would justify violence upon an insane epileptic. Force is one thing,' and often imperative; violence is quite another, and always culpable. Violence, in cases where the victims can not be amenable to reason j as in epileptic cases is futile, and leaves no possi-i possi-i ble excuse for its exercise. Gatherum usfd violence in the f hape of a blow. His act was inhuman, and i had it been so pronounced, the report of the investigating inves-tigating commission would have been altogether satisfactory to the public. |