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.

    74/356 (page 38)
    THE BORDERLAND. No distinct line of demarcation between sanity and insanity—Continuity in nature—The borderland—The insane temperament—Transforma- tion of nervous diseases—Kinship between insanity and epilepsy, neuralgia, chorea, dipsomania—Functional and organic diseases of the brain—Hereditary predisposition : its pathological evolution through generations—Originalities of idea, feeling and impulse in connection with it—Insanity and the prophetic mania—The prophets of the Old Testament—The epileptic nature of Mahomet's visions and revelations—The madman and the reformer—Eccen- tricity and insanity—Deficiency or absence of moral sense a congenital fault of mental organization—Crime and insanity—Moral sense : its accpiisition in the course of evolution; and its dependence upon organization—Physical conditions of moral degeneracy— Conclusions. It would certainly be vastly convenient, and would save a world of trouble, if it were possible to draw a hard and fast line, and to declare that all persons wbo were on one side of it must be sane and all persons wbo were on the other side of it must be insane. But a very little consideration will show how vain it is to attempt to make such a division. That nature makes no leaps, but passes from one complexion to its opposite by gradations so gentle that one shades imperceptibly into another, and no one can fix positively the point of transition, is a sufficiently trite observation. Nowhere is this more true than in respect of sanity and in- sanity; it is unavoidable therefore that-doubts, disputes