On insanity : its nature, causes, and cure / by William B. Neville.

Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On insanity : its nature, causes, and cure / by William B. Neville. 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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    upon the nature of its connection with pliysical or- ganisation, and upon the ralio?iale of the influences which they reciprocally exert upon each other. • These will always remain among the deepest secrets of human nature. They are the least obvious to phi- losophical inquiry, and consequently are the last to which attention is usually directed. Moreover, the vast diversity of aspects which the mind assumes, even in health, as its phenomena are modified by physical temperament, age, sex, climate, and a variety of other circumstances, tends to perplex in- quiry and to increase the probabilities of error. Hence we need not wonder at that admixture of superstition which, on all subjects of great moment, is the necessary companion of ignorance and fear. Nor do we find these superstitious feelings confined to this affection. All diseases were re- garded in the primitive ages as more or less the results of supernatural causes, and as such, sub- ject to the influence of charms, incantations, &c. Among the Jews, and particularly subse- quent to their return from the Babylonish cap- tivity, all affections analogous to mental aberration were attributed to the malign influence of de- mons ; and the ancients in general were influenced by these sentiments in their conceptions of all ma- ladies which they were unable to trace to any proximate and definite cause. Hence we are told that they applied the term six^pourriToi to apoplec- tics, a phrase indicating a vindictive and superna- B 2