Insanity and idiocy in Massachusetts : report of the Commission on Lunacy, 1855 / by Edward Jarvis ; with a critical introduction by Gerald N. Grob.

  • Massachusetts. Commission on Lunacy (1854)
Date:
1971
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity and idiocy in Massachusetts : report of the Commission on Lunacy, 1855 / by Edward Jarvis ; with a critical introduction by Gerald N. Grob. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and the moral order were simply parts of an organic whole and it was impossible to separate health and morality because of the indissoluble bond between them. Convinced that disease was the consequence of ignorance and sin, Jarvis devoted a considerable amount of his time to educat- ing the public about proper modes of conduct. “There is a general ignorance of the laws of vitality,” he informed the members of the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1849. “Men do not understand the connection between their conduct and vital force; and they feel but little responsibility for the main- tenance of health. They lay their plans and carry on their opera- tions, without much regard to the conditions of their existence. Life and its interests are not always paramount considerations; but they are made subordinate to matters of inferior im- portance.”®* It followed that physicians had the difficult and grave responsibility for disseminating within all communities knowledge concerning the laws of health and illness. At the urging of Horace Mann, Jarvis published several books on phys- iology, the basic purpose of which was to provide the public with accurate information about proper behavior. And proper be- havior meant more than the mere observance of the laws of physiology; it included the entire behavioral pattern of the individual. Jarvis not only advocated a proper diet, fresh air, and other prerequisites of physical development, but he also condemned the use of tobacco and alcohol, the overuse of the individual’s intellectual capacities, and the overzealous pursuit of material gain, to cite only a few examples. His ideal, not sur- prisingly, corresponded to the ideal of many middle-class and Protestant New Englanders.® Though the laws governing life were of diverse origin, Jarvis firmly believed that man, possessing as he did rational faculties, could formulate these laws in a fairly precise manner. God, after all, had not been capricious or arbitrary when he created the 68 Jarvis, “Law of Physical Life,” Christian Examiner, 35 (September 1843), 4. 64 Jarvis, “The Production of Vital Force,” in Medical Communications of the Massachusetts Medical Society, 2nd ser., vol. 4 (Boston, 1854), 23. Jarvis made much the same point in his review article of the Report of the Sanitary Commission of Massachusetts . .. 1850 [Shattuck Report], which appeared in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 21 (April 1851), 391-409 (see especially 408-409). 6 For Jarvis’s views on the proper conduct of life see the following: “Law of Physical Life,” 1-31; “The Production of Vital Force,” 1-40; Lecture on the Necessity of the Study of Physiology, Delivered Before the American Institute of Instruc- tion, at Hartford, August 22, 1845 (Boston, 1845); Practical Physiology: For the Use of Schools and Families (Philadelphia, 1847); Primary Physiology (Philadelphia, 1848); Practical Physiology: Or, Anatomy and Physiology Applied to Health (rev. ed., New York, 1852).