fundamental factor for which reaction an action done seeking to be executed resulted in was whether the act was understood as a crime Aor a disease. Judicial and medical perspectives were sometimes at odds, while at other times the chosen path of interpretation was not questioned, at least not publicly. The reactions mentioned here is primarily emerging from or uttered in official forums such as legislation and judgements, but also in debate. Theological perspectives, in themselves very varying due to differences in confessions and spiritual movements, more seldom fundamentally elicited a reaction. Other perspectives also stood back for law and, in some countries, increasingly, psychiatry. The organised reactions aimed at these acts would not appear before the eighteenth century, despite that lawyers from several countries were being well aware at least since the seventeenth century of the problems of crimes or confessions of crimes not committed in order to be executed.428 One can wonder how the reactions then were delayed? A possible answer would be ageneral suggestion that the Enlightenment with, crudely put, less interest in theology and increased interest in efficacy, would have been more interested in addressing these specific crimes. A more refined solution is offered by Mona Rautelin in her study of the history of infanticide. When she describes how infanticide was seen in the eighteenth century, she likens it to an epidemic. Both in Finland and elsewhere infanticide, although it was common, was not so common as was presumed in general discussion. She, however, thinks that there should be some rational ground for the debate, especially in an eighteenth century emphasising the rational and numerable, and finds it in the relatively greater number of those that had murdered their child that was found guilty and thus also a greater number was executed. The law was written in such a way that it was easier to find the mother murdering longing for the scaffold 428 Inger 1994 p 18, 83 sq, Weber 1937 p 161 sq. 124 different realities and reactions
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=