Mental pathology and therapeutics / By W. Griesinger, M.D. ... Translated from the German (second edition) by C. Lockhart Robertson, M.D. ... and James Rutherford, M.D.

  • Griesinger, Wilhelm, 1817-1868.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mental pathology and therapeutics / By W. Griesinger, M.D. ... Translated from the German (second edition) by C. Lockhart Robertson, M.D. ... and James Rutherford, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    ON MENTAL DISEASES. BOOK FIEST-GE]SrERAL. CHAPTEE I. ON THE SEAT OF MENTAL DISEASES AND THE METHOD OF THEIR STUDY. § 1. The following treatise lias for its object the study of mental disease or insanity, its diagnosis and treatment. Insanity itself, an ano- malous condition of the faculties of knowledge and of will, is only a symptom; our classification of the group of mental diseases proceeds upon the symptomatological method, and by such a method alone can any classification be eftected. The first step towards a knowledge of the symptoms is their locality—to which organ do the indications of the disease belong? what organ must necessarily and invariably be diseased where there is madness ? The answer to these questions is preliminary to all advancement in the study of mental disease. Physiological and pathological facts show us thafc this organ can only be the brain; we therefore primarily, and in every case of mental disease, recognize a morbid action of that organ. § 2. Physiology considers mental activity as a special form of organic life; it recognizes in mental energy the function of a particular organ, and attempts to deduce it from the physical organism. Well-known ex- periments prove that if the mental faculties, in the wide sense of the term, are related to the whole nervous system, the seat of intelligence and of vo- lition is in the brain, and confined to certain portions of it. Of course, the spinal cord, as also the ganglionic system of the sympathetic, possess not only functions of transmission, but also central functions of commu- nication, of association, and of excitation (tonicity, reflex action, etc.), but relatively to the higher central functions theirs is merely peripheral. The states of any part of the nervous system, inasmuch as they are trans- mitted to the brain, also furnish matter of mental excitation and intel- lectual activity. Impressions can originate from every peripheral nervous ramification which may prompt to motives, and originate obscure or well- defined conceptions and efforts; but it is the brain alone which receives and concentrates these impressions, and which originates the influences