On the naming and classification of mental diseases and defects / by Thomas Laycock.

  • Laycock, Thomas, 1812-1876.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the naming and classification of mental diseases and defects / by Thomas Laycock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    mental states, whether they be of disorder or defect. They are meant to express as accurately as may be, our knowledge of those states. Hence it follows that naming is no mere ingenious exercise of the intellect, but a procedure of the greatest practical importance. Our knowledge is not only thus generalised, but also rendered easily applicable to particular instances. A single word may in this way indicate either attributes, or qualities, or the series of events known as causes and effects. In naming mental diseases and defects, this method has been long practised. Thus the ancient term melancholia indicates both the characteristic physiognomy and the then supposed cause of a form of insanity in which there is morbid pain of mind. But the term phrenalgia of Guislain, meaning morbid mind-pain simply as differentiated from neuralgia, or morbid body-pain, is obviously better because it indicates the leading fact, attribute, or quality of the thing to be named. Of course the scientific form of the term differentiates the morbid mind-pain of melancholia from normal or ordinary painful feelings. And while the term indicates correctly the chief condition of a group of mental affections, it implies no theory or false fact, as is implied in the term melanchoKa. Por there are persons who are melancholic who have rather a ruddy than a swarthy complexion; and when swarthiness is associated with morbid mind-pain, it is not always or even generally of bilious origin, but is commonly a melasma, and to be distinguished from an icteric tint. The spleen is another of those etiological terms which imply both a painful mental state and its cause, and is equally vague as melanchoha. All such etiological names whatever are clearly open to the objection that they can hardly fail to be more or less erroneous since but httle is known of the essential causes of many mental diseases; as, for example, of melanchoha. There are a few great divisions, however, to which the etiological principle is a])plicable. Thus mental defects may be classed according as they are primary— that is, due to congenital defects in organization and function; or secondary—that is, consecutive to certain other morbid states occurring in a previously healthy brain. To the class of primary defects belong idiocy, partial or total; to the secondary belong amnesia, or loss of memory, dementia, and moria or folly. The legal or parliamentary terms are altogether unscientific. Tlie phrase a person of unsound mind is very vague, and is appH- cable to almost any form of mental disease of a chronic kind, as mania and moria, or to impulsive or paroxysmal disorders of the appetites, sentiments or judgment. The synonym an insane person may be held as applying more particularly to mania with inco- herence; but it may be extended to any form of moria and mania in which the conduct is manifestly absurd, and the conversation irrational. The term lunatic originally marked a paroxysmal form of mania and its cause, but as lunar influence is not now re-