Thoughts on the causation of insanity / by John P. Gray.

  • Gray, John P. (John Purdue), 1825-1886.
Date:
[1872?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thoughts on the causation of insanity / by John P. Gray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    is entirely inconsistent with our experience and observ- ation for many years with a large number of this class of patients. This is a mere assertion, and is the false basis upon which what is called transitory mania, or impulsive insanity, rests. The acceptance of such a doctrine of convulsive ideas by the profession generally, would be opening a door through which every criminal could pass unwhipt of justice. It is a happy phrase for lawyers, and for a class of experts in criminal cases, in which the enslavement of reason and the criminal act are conjoined and separated at so nice and brief an interval, as to be well characterized as convulsive. In the language of Devergie, one of the most competent authorities on this question, There does not exist, then, transitory insanity in the pure ac- ceptation of the term. Transitory insanity, like all other forms of insanity, has its prodrom ita, its remote and proximate symptoms, which the world apprehends not, and to which it does not attach sufficient importance; and which sooner or later explain them- selves by the delirious act, the act recognized by every one, often prejudicial, and at times of a criminal character. And if, with regard to transitory insanity, we ask where reason ends and men- tal unsoundness commences, although the question can not be an- swered, we say that it is necesary first to establish a distinction between the delirium of insanity and insanity itself. The explo- sion of delirium occurs long after the invasion of insanity, and it shows itself in a hasty and sudden manner.—Psycholog. Jour., vol. 12, p. 545. The history of the classification of insanity shows the tendency, under continued observation and experi- ence, to adopt the idea of physical exciting causation. The fact is, the progress of medical science has com- pelled this, under the clinical study of the neuroses which has received marked attention during the past few years. The earlier classification was based simply on the character of the mental phenomena observed.