Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / With notes by R. Macnish.
- Amariah Brigham
- Date:
- 1836
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / With notes by R. Macnish. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Although mental derangement may perhaps some- times occur in individuals, who after death exhibit no trace of organic disease, I think such cases are more rare than has generally been supposed. Dr. Haslam says, that insanity is always connected with organic alterations of the brain. Greding has noticed thick- ening of the skull in one hundred and sixty-seven cases out of two hundred and sixteen, besides other organic disease. Spurzheim says he always found changes of structure in the heads of insane people. M. Georget dissected a great number of brains, and his experience is conformable to that of the authors above-mentioned. 3 Mr. Davidson, House Surgeon to the Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum, examined with great care the heads of two hundred patients who died in the asylum, “ and he scarcely met with a single instance in which traces of disease in the brain or its membranes were not evident, even when lunacy was recent, and a patient died of a different disease. 4 source, we may, with perfect safety, deny the existence of disease altogether. Yet, what man of sane mind would do so ? We are perfectly assured by the evidence of our reason, that in such affec- tions the nerves are not in a natural or healthy state. They aye subjected to the influence of some morbid change, which affects the integrity of their functions, and whether we can trace this change or not by physical signs, obvious to the senses, we are not the less certain of its existence. So it is with the brain. If the great prin- ciple can be established that the brain is the material organ of the mind, it follows, inevitably, that in all disordered states of mental action, the fault lies with this viscus, and that it must be diseased whether we can trace morbid change of structure or not.—R.M.] 3 Medico-Chirugical Review, 1827. 4 Observations on Mental Derangement, by Andrew Combe, M.D.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22028031_0029.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
