„Igen nehéz a’ bizonytalan maga-megölésben ítéletet hozni.” Az öngyilkosság kérdése a törvényszéki orvostani diskurzusban (1780–1850)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore and contextualize the normative approach to suicide in the emerging discourse of forensic medicine between the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. Viewed through the lenses of processes, such as the medicalization and pathologization of “madness” beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century, which provided one of the most characteristic contexts of the discourse on suicide, the article examines how Hungarian authors and/or translators of textbooks, dissertations, and medical treatises aimed at partially challenging earlier views and methods of handling the problem of suicide. By focusing on three main themes, namely the increasingly valorized pathological knowledge used in judicial procedures, the sociocultural and communal contexts, and the semantic dimension of the discourse, the article also points out the contradictory nature of the discourse that partially contributed to the medicalization and decriminalization of suicide, but at the same time also perpetuated some of the most persistent prejudices and the ambivalence surrounding the act of intentionally taking one’s own life.