A treatise on the nature, symptoms, causes, and treatment of insanity : with practical observations on lunatic asylums and a description of the Pauper Lunatic Asylum for the county of Middlesex, at Hanwell.

  • Ellis, William Charles, Sir, 1780-1839.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the nature, symptoms, causes, and treatment of insanity : with practical observations on lunatic asylums and a description of the Pauper Lunatic Asylum for the county of Middlesex, at Hanwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    ticated by the late justly celebrated Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh, of a man who, in a fit of insanity, had determined on self-destruction, and who had escaped from his house in London with the deter- mination of precipitating himself from Westminster bridge into the Thames. When about to complete his purpose, he was suddenly assaulted by an armed footpad, who threatened him with instant death ; this not being the mode by which he had purposed to part with life, alarm for his safety instantly seized him, to the exclusion of the hallucination which had been but the moment before predomi- nant. Being freed from his unsought danger, he, with altered sentiments, returned to his family, fully impressed with the criminality of his design, as well as relieved from his previous perplexity. Now, had we no instances where diseases, uni- versally allowed to be bodily, were as instantane- ously brought on and cured also by the operation of moral causes as these which are said to be purely mental, the doctor's argument might be perfectly valid. That this however does occur, is so univer- sally admitted as hardly to need any proof. To those who have been in the habit of attending many patients subject to gout, instances must occur where they will recollect an attack having been brought on by violent emotions of the mind, par- ticularly by the depressing passions, from some unexpected calamity overtaking them: and two cases have fallen under my own immediate obser-