Insanity : its dependence on physical disease ... / by John P. Gray.

  • Gray, John P. (John Purdue), 1825-1886.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity : its dependence on physical disease ... / by John P. Gray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    thouglit and the physical organism. This our facul- ties are incompetent either to decide or to discover, but this short-coming of man's intelligence affects neither his duties nor his hoj)es, neither his fears nor his aspira- tions. [^RoUeston.'] The expression disease of mind should have a place in the nomenclature of modern medical science with witchcraft and demonomania. They are alike the off- spring of metaphysical speculation, alike misinterpreta- tions of phenomena. Plato and Hippocrates, in their day, respectively represented the metaphysical and medical aspects of this disorder of the brain. Plato considered insanity, on the whole, a blessing. A suf- ficiently clear |)roof that the Deity assigned prophetic power to human madness is found in the fact that no one in his right senses has any concern with divinely inspired and true prophecy, which takes place only when the reasoning power is fettered by sleep, or alien- ated by disease or by enthusiasm. \_Timoeus.~\ Again : The greatest blessings we have spring from madness, when granted by divine bounty. For the prophetess at Delphi, and the priestesses of Dodona have, when mad, done many and noble services for Greece, both privately and publicly; but in their sober senses little or noth- ing. [JPlioedius.^ Says Hippocrates : Men ought to know, that fi^om nothing else but thence [the brain] come joys, despondency and lamentations. And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet and what are unsavory; some we discriminate by habit, and some we perceive by their utility. By this we dis-