On the naming and classification of mental diseases and defects / by Thomas Laycock.

  • Thomas Laycock
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the naming and classification of mental diseases and defects / by Thomas Laycock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    primary necessity to differentiate mental diseases from congenital defects, and degrees and kinds of both from each other. It is obvious that in ordhiary experience nouns or names ex- pressive of things, and verbs expressive of actions, must continually be invented, as things and actions become more numerous or better known ; and thus a language grows as experience and knowledge increase. This principle ap])lies equally to all the sciences, which are nothing more than experience systematised, so that in pro- portion as any science whatever is extended, its terms or names multijily or are varied, and a language of the science is created. All the true sciences, therefore, have a terminology or language whicli is perfect in proportion as the science is perfect, and which changes rapidly in the rapidly progressive sciences. Lavoisier first systema- tised chemistry by giving it a nomenclature, yet we are told by high chemical authorities that the student of chemistry must be prepared for a new crop of systematic names, and a new classification of elements and compounds, every ten years, so rapidly progressive is the science; and I venture to say that, with a larger science, the time has come for a change in the classification and nomenclature of mental pathology. Unscientific persons, especially if they be learned, generally be- tray an ignorant impatience of these scientific languages; for although usually based on Latin or Greek, the terms do not teach, but only indicate scientific ideas. Feeling their ignorance, these persons im- patiently demand that the man of science shall express his know- ledge in ])lain English, which really means, shall use terms that shall enlighten them. But they forget that this is impossible from the inherent qualities of our mother Anglo-Saxon. Originally it expressed nothing more than a rude experience, and is, and always' has been therefore, too poor and unpliable for this purpose; German is the only language of the group which seems capable of scientific development. So that even the recent applications of science to the arts are designated in England by Greek and Latin terms, as telegram, photograph, terminus, gradient, and the like. In process of years these words become famihar, as many other terms have already become. Eor even the most elementary and popular of the sciences, as grammar, arithmetic, and mathematics, are not only designated by familiar names derived from the Greek, but are expounded by means of terms, which are only not considered learned because universally taught. Lindley Murray^s English grammar opens with the sen- tence, Grammar is divided into four parts, orthography, etymolog}', syntax, and prosody.- Of these eleven w^ords, there are only four purely English; of the six names or nouns, five are Greek and one Latin, and the one verb, too, is Latin; yet every English child has to learn them. It is, in truth, by the want of a scientific nomenclature that the
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