Observations on the nature, kinds, causes, and prevention, of insanity / by Thomas Arnold.

Date:
1806
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the nature, kinds, causes, and prevention, of insanity / by Thomas Arnold. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    It lias been said, how pliilosophicallj, or ■scientijically, I leave to the scientifical reader to judge, that some of the appellations which 1 have given to the species of insanity, are not only singular, but very unscieiitijic; and that “ one might as well pretend to distin- guish water from all watery fluids, by the name of aqueous water, or wine from all other liquors, by calling it vinous; as to pretend to distinguish one species of insanity from an- other, by calling it maniacal insanity, and another by the name oi phrefiitic insanity, or a third by the name of incoherent: for, surely, every maniac is phrenitic, insane, and incoherent, if these terms are to be taken in the sense in which they are commonly, and properly received^.” The very unscientific, not to say incorrect, language of this paragraph, scarcely needs to be pointed out. ]f the writer would have given an exact parallel of my mode of ar- rari2:ement, he should have considered fluid as the genus, and should then have enume- rated ail those substances which agree in the ( * See the Preface to “ An Inquiry into the Nature, and Origin of Mental Derangement,” &c. by Alexan- PER Crichton, M, D. common