Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Maudsley, Henry, 1835-1918.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    89/356 (page 53)
    THE MADMAN AND THE REFORMER. revelation, and that, deceived or deceiving, he made advantage of his distemper to heget himself the reputation of a divine authority. The character of his visions was exactly of that kind which medical experience shows to be natural to epilepsy ; similar visions which are believed in as realities and truths by those who have them occurring not unfrequently to epileptic patients confined in asylums. For my part I would as soon believe there was deception in the trance which converted Saul the persecutor into Paul the Apostle as believe that Mahomet at first doubted the reality of the events which he saw in his vision. But when we consider seriously what has come of these epileptic visions and ecstasies, we may well pause before venturing to declare what may or may not come of mad- ness or allied conditions, and be cautious how we give credit to revelations which transcend the reach of our rational faculties. It will not be necessary for the Mahometan to reject the good which there may be in the teachings of Mahomet because he is constrained to reject the supernatural authority on which they were based. The observed resemblance between prophetic inspira- tion and mania, which has been the occasion of the same name being applied to both, is a fact of no little interest in relation to what has been said of the insane tempera- ment and of the family antecedents of some of those who have given birth to new ideas or have initiated great reforms in the world. The insane person is in a minority of one in his opinions, and so at first is the reformer, the differ- ence being that the reformer's belief is an advance upon the received system of thought and so in time gets