Surely it cannot be right that a person whom the
Lunacy Commissioners have ordered to be released after inquiry should be arrested again immediately, on a new certificate of insanity from other doctors. Yet this seems to have happened to poor Miss Wood, the lady who gave herself and her money to the Shakers in the New Forest. Mr. Assheton Cross said, in the House of Commons, on Monday, in answer to a question from Mr. Dillwyn, that the Lunacy Commissioners had inquired into Miss Wood's case, and had ordered her discharge. But the statement had hardly appeared before the papers told us that Miss Wood had been again taken in charge, on the strength of a new certificate from two new doctors. At that rate, if the medical profession chose to declare the opposition to vivisection a note of insanity, a hearty opponent of that bad practice might run the gauntlet of the whole profession, in spite of having the Lunacy Commissioners on his side. We submit that the Lunacy Commissioners' discharge should make a medical certificate of lunacy of no effect,—at least until the Commissioners themselves had been induced to cancel that discharge.
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