Hanged Bodies and Melancholic Minds
Medical Practitioners and the Forensic Investigation of Suicide in Early Modern Flanders
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21713562 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kevin Dekoster (0000-0002-5993-4225, Ghent University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 49-71 |
| Publication date | 2020-07-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Crime Histoire et Sociétés (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1422-0857 • E-ISSN: 1663-4837 |
| Publisher | Librairie Droz S.A. (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/chs.2813 |
| OpenAlex | W3135806635 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This article analyses some major developments in the forensic investigation of suicide in early modern Flanders by focussing on the two main roles that medical practitioners played in suicide proceedings. First, they were asked to examine the corpses of alleged suicides in order to establish the actual cause of death and possibly unmask murders that were staged as suicides by hanging — a much-debated topic in the early modern medico-legal literature. Second, physicians and surgeons were increasingly required to attest to the mental state of suicides prior to their death, and in this way they underpinned the growing judicial leniency that eventually culminated in the official decriminalisation of suicide in 1782. Although medical evidence of insanity was frequently employed in eighteenth-century suicide trials, it never became a routine feature of all Flemish suicide proceedings. Medical practitioners only testified regarding this matter if they possessed personal knowledge of a suicide’s mental condition sufficient for giving a proper opinion as to his or her purported madness. Hence, while Flemish physicians and surgeons generally linked suicide to mental derangement, they were not the major driving force behind the final decriminalisation of self-murder
Criminology · Flemish · Homicide · Insanity · Medical emergency · Poison control · Political science · Psychiatry · Suicide prevention · Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Medicine · Psychology
The legal foundations of post-mortem examinations in early modern Flanders. Princely legislation, custom, doctrine and judicial practice
From Sin to Insanity? Suicide Trials in the Spanish Netherlands, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
De decriminalisering van de zelfdoding in de Oostenrijkse Nederlanden
La mort accidentelle à Lille et Douai au XVIIIe siècle
Suicide and the secularization of the body in early modern Saxony
Excusable Murder
Voltaire et le droit de punir. Un activiste du moment Beccaria
The Secularization of Suicide in England 1660-1800
| Highly cited | No |
|---|