Illustrations of the influence of the mind upon the body in health and disease : designed to elucidate the action of the imagination / by Daniel Hack Tuke.
- Tuke, Daniel Hack, 1827-1895.
- Date:
- 1873
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Illustrations of the influence of the mind upon the body in health and disease : designed to elucidate the action of the imagination / by Daniel Hack Tuke. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![body, are of the first importance. The automatic or reflex action of the brain, which has attracted so much notice of late, cannot be dis- regarded in the consideration of the operation of the mental faculties upon the system. Unzer, who, to a considerable extent, anticipated the observations of Marshall Hall in regard to the reflex action of the spinal cord, applied the same principle to explain many psycho-physical phe- nomena. In the following remarkable passage he enunciates the doctrine of the reflex action of the brain in regard to instinctive acts : Any painful external sensation immediately excites the war-in- stinct, and the movements proper to the instinct as instantaneously follow, even in man himself, and before the cause of the sensation is known. Between the external sensation exciting the instinct and its sentient actions, no traces of conceptions can be discovered, conse- quently there are no material ideas of imaginations, foreseeings, &c, produced by the external sensation; so that there appears to be a direct transition [Uebergang] of the latter into the instinct itself, and the material ideas proper to it to take effect in the sentient ac- tions of the other. So that it may, in some degree, be asserted that in the instincts, the brain turns back [umwendete] the felt imj)ression, and reflects it on the nerves appropriate to the sentient actions of the instinct, just as an unfelt external impression is reflected in the ganglia, and this without the material ideas of the conceptions necessary to the instinct becoming an object of special thought, they being too little developed; and without its sentient actions being obviously excited and connected with each other, according to psychological laws (i, p. 289). Gall is shown by Professor Lay cock (iv, p. 106) to have held the same opinion. He fell into the views of Unzer and Prochaska. Pie applied it to the passions, and maintained that joy, sorrow, fear, &c, are not excited by the Will, but felt before the individual has so much as dreamed of them. All that passes is an arrangement produced by nature, intended for the external world, to secure 'la conservation de 1'animal et de Fhomme, sans qu'il y ait conscience, reflexion, ni participation active de l'individu.' He also asserted that these passions, when of a certain intensity, are accompanied by actions which are independent of the Will and consciousness, but which ;ill tend toward the end proposed by nature, namely, the conserva- tion and case of the individual; thus, in fact, classing the phenomena of the passions with the instinctive movements, and those excited by ex-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21081712_0030.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
