Address to students of medicine at the Scottish Universities / by the Edinburgh Association for Sending Medical Aid to Foreign Countries.

Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address to students of medicine at the Scottish Universities / by the Edinburgh Association for Sending Medical Aid to Foreign Countries. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the brain must be diseased in all cases, are obliged to confess, with Georget, that “ in- the half at least the brain and its dependencies are absolutely healthy,—not a trace of diseased structure can be detect- ed ; ’ and again, “ diseased structures are, in general, only met with in those old insane persons who were also affected with paralysis, epi- lepsy, inflammation of the brain, or some such complaint of the brain. (P. 485.) That is to say, that diseased structure is only found in the brain of those who laboured under diseases which always depend on structural alterations of the brain, whether the persons were af- fected with insanity or not. Nay, more, even Georget is obliged, for truth's sake, to confess (for, unlike many modern theorists, he states the facts as they occur, though hei’easons erroneously on them,) that “ the alterations which are met with in the brain are posterior to the development of the insanity, of which they appear to be the conse- quence.” Pinel, perhaps the next in authority after Esquirol, states that “in general the primary seat of mental disease is in the region of the sto- mach and intestines, and that it is from this centre that the mental distemper spreads as by a kind of irradiation and further, that, al- though diseased appearances are sometimes met with in the brain, “ it is necessary, however, to mention, that in the brains of other mo- nomaniacs, no physical lesions are met with ; no alteration of the or- ganic structure of these parts; and what is still more decisive is, the same organic changes are often remarked in very different diseases,— after diseases entirely unconnected with mental alienation.” And again, “ sometimes also the organic lesions, in place of having their seat in the brain or its envelopes, are found in the viscera of the ab- domen, and consist especially of morbid changes in the liver, stomach, and intestines.” (P. 454.) Most writers, indeed all those who do not write for the express purpose of endeavouring to prove that the brain is always diseased in insanity, agree that disease of the brain is far from being commonly met with in the insane ; and that even those morbid alterations which are met with are nowise different from those which occur in the brains of those who have died of other diseases in which the intellects are perfectly entire. Indeed, it ought rather to be stated, that organic disease of the brain is only met with in those maniacs who, in addi- tion to the insanity, are affected by diseases of the brain, as epilepsy, palsy, inflammation of brain or its envelopes, &c., diseases not even generally attended with loss of reason, and in all of which organic al- terations of the brain would be met with whether the person had been insane or not. But besides all this, let us cast our eye over the very numerous diseases really depending on organic alterations in the structure of the brain, and inquire if all these are even usually attended with los9 of reason, or if they are ever attended with partial loss of reason,— with monomania ? The records of medicine fully prove that the loss of reason atten- dant on undoubted disease of the brain is of very rare occurrence, and
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