Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / [Amariah Brigham].

  • Amariah Brigham
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / [Amariah Brigham]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    liospital, who, after a blow upon his head, was found talking- in a language unknown to all, until a Welsh woman, who entered the hospital, recognized it as Welsh. The blow- upon his head had caused him to forget the English language.'2 Dr. Conolly relates a still more remarkable case of a young clergyman whose head was severely injured a few days before that on w-hich he was to have been married. He recovered as to his health, and lived until the age of eighty, but from the time of the injury his understanding was permanently deranged, though he retained the recollection of his approaching mar- riage, talked of nothing else during his whole life, and expressed impatience for the arrival of the happy day. But we see analogous affections resulting from fevers, and other diseases which affect the brain. Dr. Rush says that many of the old Germans and Swiss in Pennsylvania, who had not spoken their native lan- guage for fifty or sixty years, and who had probably forgotten it, would often use it in sickness, and he e.x- plains it, by supposing that the stimulus of the fever in their brains revived their recollection. He refers also to the case of an Italian, who was [12 During an attack of fever, accompanied with great cerebral ae. tinn, I forgot the names of things, although the mind was, in other respects, perfectly unaffected. I know a gentleman, who, in conse- quence of the excessive overworking of his brain during the compo. sition of a French and English dictionary, lost the memory of words for a considerable time. His knowledge of French, German, and Italian, which was very extensive, disappeared from his mind as if by enchantment, and did not return till the brain had its usual energy restored by quiescence R. M.]