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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    jealousy, grief, and all the violent manifestations of the ]3assions, 'as physiological states or disturbances of brain secretions? In physiology, causes and results must bear a uniform relation; and we should have for so much grief so many tears, for so much provocation so much ano'er, and the like. Instead of having^ varied manifestations in the same individual, as well as in dif- ferent individuals, from the same causes, the manifesta- tions should be uniform. Cabanis, Avho wrote nearly a century ago, expressed the materialistic theor}^ thus: To obtain a true idea of the operations by which thought is eliminated, the brain must be considered as a particular organ, especially designed for its ]3roduction ; even as the stomach and intestines for carrying on digestion, the liver for secreting the bile, the parotid and maxillary and sublingual glands for the prepara- tion of the salivary secretions. Impressions, on reaching the brain, stimulate it into activity; as aliments, being introduced into the stomach, excite it to a more abundant secretion of the gastric juices, and to those movements which favor their proper assimilation. The natural function of the one is to receive every individual impression, to attach to it certain indices, to combine the different impressions, to compare them among themselves, to draw from them certain judgments and determinations; as the function of the other is to act upon nutritive substances, whose presence stimulates it, to dissolve them, and to assimilate their juices to our nature. If it be said that the organic movements by which the functions of the brain are executed are unknown to us, it may be i-eplied that the action by which the nerves of the stomach determine the dif- ferent operations constituting digestion, the manner in which they impregnate the gastric juices with the most active dissolving power, do not disclose themselves more to our researches ! We see the ali- ments pass into the viscus, with new qualities, and we conclude that it has really caused them to undergo this alteration. We equally see impx-essions arise to the brain through the medium of the nerves; they are then isolated and without coherence. The viscus enters into action; it acts upon them, and soon it evolves them transformed into ideas, of which the language of phys- iognomy and of gesture, or the signs of speech or writing, are the