A manual of psychological medicine : containing the history, nosology, description, statistics, diagnosis, pathology, and treatment of insanity, with an appendix of cases / by John Charles Bucknill and Daniel Hack Tuke.

  • Bucknill, John Charles, 1817-1897.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of psychological medicine : containing the history, nosology, description, statistics, diagnosis, pathology, and treatment of insanity, with an appendix of cases / by John Charles Bucknill and Daniel Hack Tuke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/658 (page 35)
    It is not assertedj that the course of life which this gifted man piu'sued did not add immensely, on tlie whole, to his happiness. All that is here contended for is, that, had he not pursued that course, he would have been less likely to fall a victim to the particular disease of insanity. Civilization, with its attendant knowledge and education, creates social conditions, and offers prizes dependent solely upon intense intellectual competition, unparalleled in any former age, and of course unknown among barbarous nations, which of necessity involve risks (to employ no stronger term) which otherwise would not have existed. Oil, sons of Earth ! attempt ye still to rise. By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies ? Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys. And huries madmen in the heaps they raise. It may seem opposed to the importance which is here attached to overtasking the brain, that among the causes of insanity, as tabulated in our asylum reports, excess of study forms an in- significant item. Thus, in 472 cases in which the cause was traced by Esquirol, in 13 only is it referred to excess of study. But, even if this proportion be generally true, it is not to be forgotten that there are circumstances almost necessarily associ- ated with it (excessive study) which are recognised by all as frequently productive of mental disease. Loss of sleep, by which the nutrition of the cerebral tissue is necessarily interfered with, is one of the most important of these. The health is, moreover, injured by the various attendants on sedentary employments, and it cannot be expected that the brain should escape without a certain amount of injury. Besides, in many an over-stimu- lated child, or over-worked student, there may be only sown the seeds of future mental disease. Other circumstances may cause the seed to germinate, and be regarded as the cause, instead of merely the occasion. From these and other considerations, it is evident that ex- cess of study may lay the foundation of many of those cases of insanity, in which statistics recognise only loss of rest and numberless other secondary causes. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that excess of study is only one division of the intel- lectual strain to which civilized men are subjected. Intense application to business is another of great importance.