Insanity and allied neuroses : practical and clinical / by George H. Savage.

  • Savage, George H. (George Henry), 1842-1921.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity and allied neuroses : practical and clinical / by George H. Savage. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    those who are passing from sanity into some form of mental disorder, and who may again pass through this disturbed mental borderland on recovery. (2) Eccen- tricity may be developed de novo just as, I believe, certain forms of mental perversion may be developed. I think injustice has been done to man's power of development and of self-government by those who would look to the parent for every quality, good or bad, possessed by the offspring. The human being comes into the Avorld with powers of development of a most extraordinary kind, and there is hardly any limit to the power of accommodation to the environ- ment but that of simple physical possibility. It is a necessity that certain persons of unstable disposition, being surrounded by unnatural circumstances and conditions, should develop abnormal properties. Thus, the person who, being somewhat niggardly, has begun by collecting trifles, such as pins, sardine boxes, horse shoes, and the like, may end in shutting himself up in an attic, in refusing to wear clothes, and being un- willing even to. wash, for fear of the cost of soap and water. Such cases are looked upon as eccentric, and I might fill a book in simply narrating instances of eccentricity as seen outside asylums. Most persons have tricks both of body and mind ; they have their own idiosyncracies of temperament, as we should say. If the one or the other is not duly restrained arid checked, a habit is in process of development which may influence for evil the whole life of the individual. Eccentricity may appear in any one of the various departments of mental life; so that one person may be suspicious, another may be jealous, another subtle and untruthful, while a fourth may be violent, passionate, and revengeful. All these a re properties of the sound mind, if in due subordination; but if Left unrestrained, or stimulated in growth by foolish encouragement, their tendency is to make men,