the explanations of the acts Eventually the government, rather listening to the physicians concerning the state of the mind of Åhlberg, decided that adate for the execution of Åhlberg was to be set.913 The same action had at least been taken also a few months earlier. Brita Christina Wanselius was sentenced to die for killing a child she took care of. She however persisted in claiming her innocence and the priests preparing her, worrying that she might be innocent, through the rector had notified the authorities.914 The priests also had received several prolongations and the local authority after less than three months since the sentence, however, due to the notification, had written to the government and asked what should be done. The answer was to set a date.915 Several other cases of similar type exist from the next decade.916 An earlier example described by Lind is a similar transfer of tasks from the clergy to the physicians in Schleswig-Holstein around 1760. Among the tasks transferred were judgements on the mental state of those who had committed suicide and the treatment of melancholia.917 A significant development was when acts with the hope of being executed as amotive to a larger extent became treated as the results of some kind of insanity. One example is the recognition of a new disease – homicidal monomania. Martschukat, using mainly German sources, dates this to the 1820’s, while according to Stephen Kern the term was first used in France by Étienne Esquirol around 1808.918 However, according to Étienne-Jean Georget, it was Philippe Pinel, the predecessor of Esquirol, which made the concept of homicidal monomania well known, although he called it ”manie sans delire”.919 Esquirol later came to agree with a colleague that in all cases they had seen it was a disease preceded by stomach disorder.920 The disease, which after a few decades not longer 913 Statsrådsprotokoll i justitieärende 13 September 1827 NJrARAS. 914 Letter from Lars Tunelius 7 May 1827 utslagshandlingar 14 June 1827 NJrARAS. 915 Statsrådsprotokoll i justitieärende 14 June 1827 NJrARAS. 916 Bergman 1996 p 167 sq. 917 Lind 1999 p 421. 918 Martschukat 2000a p 174, Kern 2004 p 247. 919 Georget 1825 p 74 sq, 95, ’mania without delirium’. 920 The medico-chirurgical review 1827 p 227. 257
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