MARGINAL NOTES ON THE LUNATICS ACT IN FORCE

Pending a new legal arrangement of mental health care the Lunatics Act of 1884 is stil) in force in the Netherlands. This obsolete act is based on the notion „lunatic". The purport of this notion has changed considerably in the past eighty years and nowadays there are no objective directives to decide under all circumstances whether a certain patient has or has not to be considered as a „lunatic" according to law.
In some marginal notes is tried to comment the existent act section by section from a present-day point of view.