Essay upon the influence of the imagination on the nervous system : contributing to a false hope in religion / by Grant Powers.

  • Grant Powers
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essay upon the influence of the imagination on the nervous system : contributing to a false hope in religion / by Grant Powers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    has fully considered this question.] 1 think there can be no doubt of this fact, when we have attended to our own consciousness, and the various phenomena, exhib- ited by others. We have witnessed objects of distress among our fellow creatures, and they excited our pity, and created a desire in us to exert ourselves for their relief. We have gone away and recalled the same objects by our memory, and our imagination has de- picted to us the scene which we witnessed. The ef- fect on us, in the latter instance, was similar to what it was in the former. We pitied, and desired to relieve, as at first. There might be this difference—the im- pression from the imagination may have been in some degree less, than that received from sense, and the commiseration a little more feeble. In the same man- ner objects, that have created disgust on sight, have continued to produce the same feeling in their long ab- sence. And objects, which were pleasing on sight, have been enjoyed in a similar manner, as often as the mind has exerted itself in representing them to us in their absence. These facts are undeniable. The rational method of explaining this is, that the mind, which holds a mysterious union with the origin of the nerves within the brain, after receiving an impression from an object without, acting upon the extremities, may cause a re- action of a similar kind from the origin of them, and that the reaction has a similar effect on the system, that the external object produced, while acting upon the extremity of the nerves. But whether this solu- tion be the true explanation of the method in which the mind and body operate to produce the effects 1 have