Lunacy

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Lunacy \Lu"na*cy\, n.; pl. {Lunacies}. [See {Lunatic}.]
     1. Insanity or madness; properly, the kind of insanity which
        is broken by intervals of reason, -- formerly supposed to
        be influenced by the changes of the moon; any form of
        unsoundness of mind, except idiocy; mental derangement or
        alienation. --Brande. --Burrill.


        [1913 Webster]
  
              Your kindred shuns your house
              As beaten hence by your strange lunacy. --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. A morbid suspension of good sense or judgment, as through
        fanaticism. --Dr. H. More.
  
     Syn: Derangement; craziness; mania. See {Insanity}.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  lunacy
       n 1: obsolete terms for legal insanity [syn: {madness}, {insaneness}]
       2: foolish or senseless behavior [syn: {folly}, {foolery}, {tomfoolery},
           {craziness}, {indulgence}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  97 Moby Thesaurus words for "lunacy":
     aberration, abnormality, absurdity, alienation, asininity,
     battiness, brain damage, brainlessness, brainsickness, buffoonery,
     clouded mind, clownishness, crackpottedness, crankiness, craziness,
     daffiness, daftness, dementedness, dementia, derangement,
     desipience, disorientation, distraction, eccentricity, fatuity,
     fatuousness, folie, folly, foolery, foolhardiness, foolheadedness,
     foolishness, frivolity, frivolousness, furor, giddiness, goofiness,
     idiocy, illogic, illogicality, imbecility, inanity, ineptitude,
     insaneness, insanity, irrationality, loss of mind, loss of reason,
     madness, mania, mental deficiency, mental derangement,
     mental disease, mental disorder, mental disturbance,
     mental illness, mental instability, mental sickness,
     mind overthrown, mindlessness, mindsickness, niaiserie, nugacity,
     nuttiness, oddness, pixilation, possession, preposterousness,
     psychopathy, psychosis, queerness, rabidness, reasonlessness,
     ridiculousness, sappiness, screwiness, senselessness,
     shattered mind, sick mind, sickness, silliness, strangeness,
     stupidity, thoughtlessness, triflingness, triviality, unbalance,
     unbalanced mind, unsaneness, unsound mind, unsoundness,
     unsoundness of mind, wackiness, weirdness, witlessness, zaniness,
     zanyism
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  LUNACY, med. jur. A disease of the mind, which is differently defined as it 
  applies to a class of disorders, or only to one species of them. As a 
  general term it includes all the varieties of mental, disorders, not 
  fatuous. 
       2. Lunacy is adopted as a general term, on account of its general use 
  as such in various legislative acts and legal proceedings, as commissions of 
  lunacy, and in this sense it seems to be synonymous with non compos mentis, 
  or of unsound mind. 
       3. In a more restricted sense, lunacy is the state of one who has bad 
  understanding, but by disease, grief, or other accident, has lost the use of 
  reason. 1 Bl. Com. 304. 
       4. The following extract from a late work, Stock on the Law of Non 
  Compotes Mentis, will show the difficulties of discovering what is and what 
  is not lunacy. "If it be difficult to find an appropriate definition or 
  comprehensive name for the various species of lunacy," says this author, 
  page 9, "it is quite as difficult to find anything approximating to a 
  positive evidence of its presence. There are not in lunacy, as in fatuity, 
  external signs not to be mistaken, neither is there that similarity of 
  manner and conduct which enables any one, who has observed instances of 
  idiocy or imbecility, to detect their presence in all subsequent cases, by 
  the feebleness of perception and dullness of sensibility common to them all. 
  The varieties of lunacy are as numerous as the varieties of human nature, 
  its excesses commensurate with the force of human passion, its phantasies 
  coextensive with the range of human intellect. It may exhibit every mood 
  from the most serious to the most gay, and take every tone from the most 
  sublime to the most ridiculous. It may confine itself to any trifling 
  feeling or opinion, or overcast the whole moral and mental conformation. It 
  may surround its victim with unreal persons and events, or merely cause him 
  to regard real persons and events with an irrational favor or dislike, 
  admiration or contempt. It may find satisfaction in the most innocent folly, 
  or draw delight from the most atrocious crime. It may lurk so deeply as to 
  elude the keenest search, or obtrude so openly as to attract the most 
  careless notice. It may be the fancy of an hour, or the distraction of a 
  whole life. Such being the fact, it is not surprising that many scientific 
  and philosophical men have vainly exhausted their observation and ingenuity 
  to find out some special quality, some peculiar mark or characteristic 
  common to all cases of lunacy, which might serve at least as a guide in 
  deciding on its absence or presence in individual instances. Being hopeless 
  of a definition, they would willingly have contented themselves with a test, 
  but even this the obscurity and difficulty of the subject seem to forbid. 
       5. Lord Erskine, who, in his practice at the bar, had his attention 
  drawn this way, from being engaged in some of the most remarkable trials of 
  his time involving questions of lunacy, has given as his test, "a delusive 
  image, the inseparable companion of real insanity," (Ersk. Misc. Speeches) 
  and Dr. Haslam, whose opportunities of observation have surpassed most other 
  persons, has proposed nearly the same, by saying that "false belief is the 
  essence of insanity." (Haslam on Insanity.) Sir John Nicholl, in his 
  admirable judgment in the case of Dew v. Clark, thus expresses himself: "The 
  true criterion is, where there is delusion of mind there is insanity; that 
  is, when persons believe things to exist, which exist only, or at least, in 
  that degree exist only in their own imagination, and of the non-existence of 
  which neither argument nor proof can convince them; they are of unsound mind;
  
  or as one of the counsel accurately expressed it, it is only the belief of 
  facts, which no rational person could have believed, that is insane 
  delusion." (Report by Haggard, p. 7.) Useful as these several remarks are, 
  they are not absolutely true. It is indeed beyond all question that the 
  great majority of lunatics indulge in some "delusive image," entertain some 
  "false belief." They assume the existence of things or persons which do not 
  exist, and so yield to a delusive image, or they come to wrong conclusions 
  about persons and things which do exist, and so fall into a false belief. 
  But there is a class of cases where lunacy is the result of exclusive 
  indulgence in particular trains of thought or feeling, where these tests are 
  sometimes wholly wanting, and yet where the entire absorption of the 
  faculties in one predominant idea, the devotion of all the bodily and mental 
  powers to one useless or injurious purpose, prove that the mind has lost its 
  equilibrium. With some passions, indeed, such as self-esteem and fear, what 
  was at first an engrossing sentiment, will often go on to a positive 
  delusion; the self-adoring egotist grows to fancy himself a sovereign or a 
  deity; the timid valetudinarian becomes the prey of imaginary diseases, the 
  victim of unreal persecutions. But with many other passions, such as desire, 
  avarice or revenge, the neglect and forgetfulness of all things save one, 
  the insensibility to all restraints of reason, morality, or prudence, often 
  proceed to such an extent as to justify holding an individual as a lunatic, 
  incapable of all self-restraint, although, strictly speaking, not possessed 
  by any delusive image or false belief. Much less do these tests apply to 
  many cases of irresistible propensity to acts wholly irrational, such as to 
  murder or to steal without the smallest assignable motive, which, rare as 
  they are, certainly occur from time to time, and cannot but be held as an 
  example of at least partial and temporary lunacy. It is to cases where no 
  false belief or image can be detected, that the remark of Lord Erskine is 
  more particularly applicable; "they frequently mock the wisdom of the wisest 
  in judicial trials," (Ersk. Misc. Speeches,) and were not the paramount 
  object of all legal punishment the benefit of the community, which makes it 
  inexpedient to spare offenders against the law, if insanity be the ground of 
  their defence, except upon the clearest proof, lest skillful dissemblers 
  should thereby be led to hope for impunity, very subtle questions might no 
  doubt be raised as to the degree of moral responsibility and mental sanity 
  attaching to the perpetrators of many atrocious acts, seeing that they often 
  commit them tinder temptations quite inadequate to allure men of common 
  prudence, or under passions so violent as to suspend altogether the 
  operations of reason or free will. For as it is impossible to obtain an 
  accurate definition of lunacy, so it is manifestly so, to draw the line 
  correctly between it and its opposite rationality, or, to borrow the words 
  of Chief Justice Hale, (1 Hale's P. C. p. 30,) "Doubtless most persons that 
  are felons, of themselves and others, are under a degree of partial insanity 
  when they commit those offences. It is very difficult to define the 
  indivisible line that divides perfect and partial, insanity; but it must 
  rest on circumstances duly to be weighed and considered both by the judge 
  and jury, lest on one side there be a kind of inhumanity towards the defects 
  of human nature, or on the other side too great an indulgence given to great 
  crimes."