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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    its most marked form, we must acknowledge that the hereditary predisposition has assumed the character of deterioration of race, and that the individual represents the beginning of a degeneracy which, if not checked by favourable circumstances, will go on increasing from generation to generation and end finally in the extreme degeneracy of idiocy. With the occurrence of idiocy there is happily the extinction of the degenerate variety, for with it come impotence and sterility. Beneath and beyond the little span of nature which lies within the reach of our faculties, with which our senses bring us into relation, there is a power which inspires evolution on earth, taking good care that its work is done, no matter at what cost in time, in prodigality of life, in individual suffering, animal or human. Let it be observed now that in its less marked forms the insane neurosis is by no means the unmixed evil which it might on a superficial consideration appear to be. When we look into the matter it is truly remarkable how much mankind has been indebted for its originating impulses and for special displays of talent, if not of genius, to individuals who themselves or whose parents have sprung from families in which there has been some predisposition to insanity. Such persons are apt to seize on and pursue the bypaths of thought which have been overlooked by more stable intellects, and so, by throwing a side light upon things, to discover unthought of rela- tions. One observes this tendency of mind even in those oi them who have no particular genius or talent; for they have a novel way of looking at things, do not run in the