On the classification and forms of insanity / by Henry Munro.

  • Monro, Henry, 1817-1891.
Date:
[between 1850 and 1859?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the classification and forms of insanity / by Henry Munro. 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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    call it) as a temporary abode ; that this sensorium is capa- ble of being the channel and instrument of the mind, and is the medium through Avhich its manifestations are made, but that its imperfections cloud, and sometimes obliterate for a time its light. The facts that cerebral organization and mental power bear a fixed relation to each other, and that the mental principle grows and developes Avith its physical tenement, do not invalidate this theory, but rather point to the harmony in the works of the Creator, and His provi- dential adoption of the spiritual principle to the body it is to inhabit. This belief is held by the learned and the good, and I know it has the sanction of the highest physiological authority. I wish to make this emphatic declaration, that whatever I may say hereafter of diseased mind, I refer to disease of the instrument of mind, not of mind itself Madness is imperfect action, and belongs to a system subject to decay. I feel this caution to be the more necessary, in that the object of our solicitude having lost moral liberty, and being the victim of his mind, presents us continually with a picture where the lowest faculties, and those most intimately connected Avith simple nervous impressions, have taken the reins from the highest, and sensations have usurped the places of reason and conscience. Physiology points further than to the general truth that brain as a whole is the instrument of the mind as a whole, and gives us good reason to believe that the great faculties, the emotions, the sensations, and the intelligence, have distinguish- able ganglia, sensoria, or spheres of action. In the dis- tinction which I make above between notional and intelli- gentinl insanity, I do not suppose that intelligential does not continue notional, or that a notion is not an intellectual act; but 1 wish to discern clearly between delusion on one or more points and general incoherence. It should be borne in mind that the more rudimentary faculties are often involved in the injury that affects the higher, thus if the notions are wrong, we generally find that the emotions suifer also. I would now divide the subject into the three following heads: I. I would say a few words on each of the columns in the preceding table. II. 1 propose to give an historical sketch of the various progressive steps from perfect soundness of mind to complete madness. III. I would apply cases from a large number which I have in Imiid in the elucidation of these progressive steps.