Cursory remarks on legislative regulation of the insane : and its probable influence on their physical and moral condition : with observations on some defects in the present system / by George Man Burrows M.D. F.L.S.

  • George Man Burrows
Date:
1819
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cursory remarks on legislative regulation of the insane : and its probable influence on their physical and moral condition : with observations on some defects in the present system / by George Man Burrows M.D. F.L.S. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    cured, or rather more than 1 in 3 only* ! This certainly applies to one hospital only ; but from the facts stated (page 66), there is too much rea- son to conclude that further research \Vould elicit analogous results. To what is this retrogression to be attributed ? May not medical practice have bowed too lowly at the shrine of philosophy ? Throughout the whole of the 17th and part of the 18th centuries, the philosophers, who tiourished and eminently adorned the age, vyere deeply involved in speculations upon the seat of the soul, and with metaphysical disquisitions upon the relation of mind to matter. This famous controversy ended by the triumph of Descartes over the advocates of materialism, and the esta- blishing of the independency of mind on the body. Hence the mind has been treated as a * It is but justice to add, that since the first publication of this pamphlet, a system has been adopted in New Bethlera, which, while it reflects the highest credit on the judgment and zeal of the Physicians, carmot fail to produce correspondent benefit to the patients. Although the local situation of that hospital, and other insuparable errors in the design, are great obstacles to that success which the amplitude of its funds admits, yet, agreeably to my own views of tiie nature and treatment of insanity, ] confidently predict, that when- ever its registers are published, they vi^ill exhibit satisfactory evidence of great practical improvement. h2