This article explores the position of mental health authorities in the civil justice field by studying psychiatric evaluations in cases of judicial interdiction on account of dementia in Santiago de Chile in the mid nineteenth century. It examines the legal framework that created a space for the figure of the expert and focuses on the everyday use of psychiatric evaluations, in order to explore some of the forces which legitimized their authority in the changing conditions of early psychiatry.
madness; interdiction; psychiatry; expert testimony; Santiago de Chile