Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    TRANSITORY MANIA OF EPILEPTIC ORIGIN. the organs of special revelations from on high * Like Swedenborg, they are sometimes carried up into heaven while yet in the flesh, and have conferences with angels, prophets, and even with the Supreme; or, like Mahomet, they are visited by angels, and are invested with a prophetic mission. Their visions, in fact, resemble very closely those which are said to have been seen by certain religious enthusiasts, and which have been the origin of certain religious creeds.t It will be the interesting work of a future inductive psychology to examine and point out how many supposed revelations of the supernatural, and how many theological beliefs founded on such revela- tions, have been the results of deranged nervous function —a deranged mentalism, if I may be permitted to coin such a word—of an epileptic or allied nature. It is important to bear in mind that the existence of epilepsy may be overlooked for some time in a person even by medical men, and this is perhaps more likely to be the case when there is a mental alienation which absorbs the attention. Attacks of epileptic vertigo are sometimes so slight that they are thought to be merely transient attacks of giddiness or faintness; and it is * There is an interesting paper on The Religious Sentiment in Epileptics, by James C. Howden, M.D., in the Journal of Mental Science for January, 1873. t An interesting chapter might be written upon the mental charac- teristics of the epileptic neurosis. There is the immense energy, such as was exemplified in Mahomet, Napoleon, &c. Then there is a sin- gularly vivid imagination, which is apt sometimes to occupy itself with painful or repulsive subjects. Probably the invention of the modern Bensational novel, with its murders, bigamies, and other crimes, was an achievement of the epileptic imagination. B 2