of the patients under his treatment, all of whom he regarded as insane and irresponsible, knew what they were doing and could distinguish right from wrong.
Countless attempts have been made to reconcile this obvious anachronism with justice and modern knowledge, but always without success, and courts have wriggled hard in their efforts to make the test adequate to the particular cases which they have been trying, but only with the result of hopelessly confounding the decisions.
But, however it is construed, the test as laid down in 1843 is insufficient in 1908.

Medical science has marched on with giant strides, while the law, so far as this subject is concerned, has never progressed at all.

It is no longer possible to determine mental responsibility by any such artificial rule as that given by the judges to the Lords in McNaughten's case, and which juries are supposed to apply in the courts of today.

I say "supposed," for juries do not apply it, and the reason is simple enough--you cannot expect a juryman of intelligence to follow a doctrine of law which he instinctively feels to be crude and which he knows is arbitrarily applied.
No juryman believes himself capable of successfully analyzing a prisoner's past mental condition, and he is apt to suspect that, however sincere the experts on either side may appear, their opinions may be even less definite than the terms in which they are expressed.

The spectacle of an equal number of intellectual-looking gentlemen, all using good English and all wearing clean linen, reaching diametrically opposite conclusions on precisely the same facts, is calculated to fill the well-intentioned juror with distrust.