Nineteenth annual report of the directors of the Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics : submitted in terms of their charter to a general meeting of directors, 17th June 1839.

  • Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nineteenth annual report of the directors of the Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics : submitted in terms of their charter to a general meeting of directors, 17th June 1839. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    human investigation; and, as our knowledge of it is still very limited and imperfect, no means ought to be left unemployed in acquiring more extended and satisfactory information. What is insanity? The most distinguished writers give different answers to this question. No definition which has yet been given has been universally adopted.* An eminent writer conceives that any attempt to give a precise definition of the term would be vain and fruitless, f On trials in cases of lunacy, the most celebrated practitioners give contradictory evidence, and experience proves that it is not easy to state the precise difference between a sound and an unsound mind. The line of distinction between strong passion, or irritable temper, and derangement of intellect, is not easily drawn, and some writers maintain that a person may be insane and yet in the perfect exercise of his mental faculties, the derangement consisting in the affections or passions being without due guidance and control.J The human constitution is certainly a very nice and complex system. In its sound state there is a happy unison between per¬ ception, moral feeling, and physical organization, constituting an active* intelligent, social, religious, and accountable being. That all the parts of such a complicated machine should not always act in perfect harmony, cannot be a matter of surprise; but, how the intellect and moral principles are affected by any defect or change in the corporeal organization, is a problem which is beyond the power of man to solve; and on this, as on many other subjects, we must rest satisfied with facts ascertained by the sure test of expe¬ rience. The obscurity and uncertainty that rest upon this sub- * La folie, 1’alienat.ion mentale, est une affection cerebrale, ordinairement chroni- que, sans fievre, ehacterizee par desordre de la sensibilite, de /intelligence, de la volont e.—Esquirol. Dr Mayo declines giving a definition of insanity, but says that it is “ a morbid state, to which those persons are subject in whom the power of volition is feeble, when they are placed under the influence of certain mental and physical causes/’ t “ An infallible definition of madness I believe will be impossible, as it is an at- tempt to comprise, in a few words, the wide range and mutable character of this pro- teus disorder.” “ As the practitioner’s own mind must be the criterion by which he infers the insa¬ nity of any person, and when we consider the various and frequently opposite opinions o.f these intellectual arbitrators, the reader will be aware that I have not abstained from giving a definition of madness without some reason.”—Dr Haslam. } Dr Prichard’s division of insanity is into moral and intellectual insanity : He holds, with Pinel, that it consists in certain cases of a morbid perversion of the affections and moral feelings, without any sensible lesion of the intellectual faculties.