A theory as to the proximate cause of insanity : together with some observations upon the remote causes of the disease / by Beverley R. Morris.

  • Morris, Beverley Robinson.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A theory as to the proximate cause of insanity : together with some observations upon the remote causes of the disease / by Beverley R. Morris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    induced by reflexive irritation, and therefore its presence in a great many diseases is no reason for denying its existence idiopatliically, or its importance remedially. Ordinary tic douloureux may, and very probably does, owe its origin to irritation at the roots of the engaged nerves, and hence the difficulty of its cure. This irritation may be induced by tumours, or bony deposits pressing on some portion of the nerve, and I have no doubt that this is a very frequent cause of this disease. In inflammation of the spinal cord itself, I believe you would seldom find pain a prominent symptom; indeed I think the facts we are in possession of, with regard to this most obscure disease, tend to shew that the spinal cord has no sensibility, properly so called; but should its membranes be involved, or primarily engaged, pain in the back will be urgent, but not, I believe, on pressure. In fact, under the head of spinal irritation, both inflammation of the cord itself, inflammation of its membranes, inflammation of its bony coverings, and true spinal irritation have been confounded together, and this has led to the unsatisfactory conclusions usually formed with regard to this disease. Dr. Henry M^Cormac, in his methodus medendi, seems much to doubt the existence of the disease in question at all, on the ground that he has found spinal tenderness on pressure, with- out any existing neuralgic affection of the chest, &c. This appears to me to be very bad logic. It is probable that, in the cases alluded to by him, the symptoms were indicative of an irritated state of the corresponding portion of the sym- pathetic nerve, caused perhaps by the state of the bowels, or some other exciting cause. Dr. Addison, in his work on the Disorders of Females from Uterine Irritation, mentions the pain under the left mamma, or some part of the abdomen, which he vaguely refers to irritation of the cardiac orifice of the stomach ; some cases, however, he looks on as neuralgic. The pain of the abdomen, he says, he has more than once mistaken for peritonitis, but, of course, the nature of the pulse, and the