Report of the Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital, (situate near Cheadle, Cheshire), from June 25th, 1858, to June 24th, 1859.

  • Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital, (situate near Cheadle, Cheshire), from June 25th, 1858, to June 24th, 1859. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1 b> L') the production of insanity divested of their technicalities appear then to be capable of being thus simply stated. There is first a plus emotional state which may be transitory, or which may persist for some time as a pure emotion; ideas are next evolved from it, or ideas excited in the ordinary manner are, through its presence, presented in exaggerated and unnatural characters. If these are of a lively and active nature, it is mania; if few in number, it is monomania; if gloomy and terrible in character, it is melancholia. Now, there are two cases in the above list which appear to illustrate the evil effects following a morbid indulgence of religious emotion; they are those in which religion is assigned as the cause. It is scarcely necessary to observe here, what is indeed universally acknowledged, that religion is not nearly so frequent a cause of insanity as it has been represented to be. Many of the insane are the victims of religious despondency, or entertain delusions in connection with religious subjects, when religion has had nothing what¬ ever to do with the cause; the delusions or despondency are the manifestations of the madness previously established. If a man from some cause become melancholy, his depression leads him to seize on the gloomy parts of Scripture; the ideas that he has committed the “ unpardonable sin,” that te his soul is for ever lost,” and such like, are the articulation of his melancholy. It is for this reason mainly that religious subjects form such a large part in the aberrations of madness. In one of the two cases which are said to have had religion for a cause of the insanity, there was strongly marked hereditary predisposition traceable; religion had been only the exciting cause. The patient, a female, is a member of the Church of England, who had from some cause been induced to attend a Baptist Chapel. So great was the impression produced on her mind by what she there heard, that she became low and desponding about her spiritual condition, and soon profoundaftly melancholy, believing that c