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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    giving in marriage without much reflection, and to trust the universal plan will all protect. Nevertheless there is a certain amount of definite knowledge which we are bound to recognise, however we may deal with it. It is a fact that a pathological evolution—or, more correctly, a pathological degenera- tion—of mind does take place through generations. The course of events may be represented as some- thing in this wise: in the first generation we per- haps observe only a predominance of the nervous temperament, irritability, a tendency to cerebral con- gestion, with passionate and violent outbreaks; in the second generation there is an aggravation of the morbid tendencies, displaying itself in cerebral haemor- rhages, idiopathic affections of the brain, and in the appearance of such neuroses as epilepsy, hysteria and hypochondria; in the third generation, if no check has been opposed to the downward course, we meet with instinctive tendencies of a bad nature, exhibiting them- selves in eccentric, disorderly and dangerous acts, and with attacks of some forms of mental derangement; and finally, in the fourth, generation, matters going from bad to worse, we meet with deaf-mutism, imbecility and idiocy, and sterility, the terminus of the pathological decline being reached. Such is the course of degenera- tion when it proceeds unchecked. But an opposite course of regeneration of the family by happy marriages, wise education, and a prudent conduct of life is possible; the downward tendency may be thus checked, and even perhaps effaced in time. As