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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    of the whole organism, as comprehending the whole bodily life. It has been one of the results of the study of morbid mental action to make clear the importance of recognizing the influence of particular organs upon the constitution and function of mind. Pathological instances of pertur- bation of function have yielded intimations which we should have failed to obtain by observation only of the smooth and regular action of the organism in health; and we can now say with the utmost confidence that although the mind may be studied by the psychological method of observing self-consciousness, it cannot be investigated fully by that method alone. As it was in time past, so in time to come error, confusion, and contradiction must flow from so exclusive and insufficient a method. In consequence of the theological and meta- physical views of mind, and of the way in which it was kept isolated from all other subjects of human inquiry, the phenomena of disordered mental action were, until quite recently, as much neglected by mental philosophers as the insane patients who exhibited them were neglected by those who had the care of them. It seems never to have occurred to metaphysicians that these phenomena could have any bearing on a philosophy of mind; certainly, had it done so, their exclusive method of inquiry would have proved singularly unfit for the observation of them; and it is only recently, since the nature of insanity has been recognized, and the insane have been treated as sufferers from disease, that attempts have been syste- matically made to use the valuable material which they