Hallucinations.

  • Brierre de Boismont, Alexandre-Jacques-François, 1798-1881.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hallucinations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    PREFACE. A philosophical physician said, in speaking of the first edi- tion of this -work: If the author had heen satisfied to treat the vast question of hallucinations as medical men usually treat a question of pathology, the medical press would have announced his monograph according to custom, with simple praises and very inoffensive criticisms; medical science would have num- bered one more good work, and so the matter would have ended. But such has not been the case. M. Brierre cle Boismont, in giving a less scholastic turn to his treatise, and introducing questions of historic psychology, has succeeded in electrifying both the press and the public. Thence have arisen those warm eulogies which have appeared in excellent journals, unconnected with medicine ; thence those keen, but polite criticisms which have been impartially received in a scientific magazine. It appears to me that this is a great triumph. It is no easy matter to make the chords of contemporary criticism, in general so slack, thus vibrate. The success is still greater, if a similar result has been obtained in defending the cause of truth and common sense.* This opinion strikes more forcibly as emanating from one whose judgment on such points is incontestable, and as being an immediate reply to attacks directed against our opinions in two highly esteemed journals. Let us, then, assert that if the identity 'of lunacy and hallucination has been contended for by eminent doctors, the doctrine that we have advocated, of the co- existence of reason with hallucinations, has been embraced and defended by very celebrated writers of the medical press— Messrs. Be'veille', Parise, Carriere, Cerise, Amedee Latour, Dechainbre, Gouraud, Tardieu, Fuster, Miguel in France, Sig- mond in England, Ideler in Germany, etc. Two authors, Messrs. * Cdrise, Examen dcs Hallucinations.