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.

    52/356 (page 16)
    cured sometimes by moral means—are entirely consistent with the theory of material disease, while the arguments in favour of the materialistic theory are quite incon- sistent with the spiritualistic hypothesis, which has the further disadvantage of not being within the range of rational human conception. To the argument that madness is produced sometimes by moral causes, which must be admitted, it is sufficient to reply, first, that long-continued or excessive stimu- lation of any organ does notably induce physical disease of it, and that in this respect, therefore, the brain only obeys a general law of the organism; and, secondly, that it is possible to produce experimentally, by entirely physical causes, mental derangement exactly similar to that which is produced by moral causes. There are many facts which would justify us in laying it down as a generalization of inductive mental science, that a state of consciousness may be changed experimentally by agents which produce changes in the molecular constitution of those parts of the nervous system which minister to he manifestations of consciousness. Take, for example, the way in which, by the administration of opium or haschisch, we modify in a remarkable manner a person's conceptions of space and time and of other relations. To the second argument in favour of the immaterial nature of unsound mind which is founded on the distinctly curative influence S moral treatment, the easy reply is, that moral means are beneficial in insanity by yielding repose to pads much needing repose, and by stimulating to activi y par s much needing to be active; by yielding repose to