The pathology of mind / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pathology of mind / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    61/602 page 45
    effect. The dreams wliicli occur under these conditions betray their origin by their character. They are disagreeable or dis- tressing dreams of being encompassed by difficulties or troubles of some kind or other—the exponents of a condition of organic element whicli means a reduction of its vitality* For a moral strain or a physical excess is able to produce the same physical effects in the cerebral nerve-centres—namely, consumption of energy and lowered vitality ; and tlie lowered vitality becomes in dreams an oppression or a check or a humiliation of self, just as a bodily pain which we are suffering when we go to sleep becomes transformed sometimes into the persecutor of our dream. We cannot be too mindful of the ])hysical effects of moral causes ; a moral shock may kill as instantly and surely as a stroke of lightning, and when it does so its operation and effect are as certainly physical in the one case as in the other. Nor can we be too mindful of the effects of exhausting physical conditions upon mental tone and power. AVhosoever is so unhappy as to have habitually sleepless nights and bad dreams should bethink him that his health requires attention; for in some way or other he is not living wisely. A j)rudentm;m will indeed use his dreams as a sort of health-gauge. When Haudet declared that he could live bounded in a nut- shell and count himself a king of infinite space, were it not that he had bad dreams, he was suffering from the great moral com- moti(«n produced by the appalling revelation of his lather's murder, which his father's ghost had made to him, and from the terrible strain of the obligation laid upon him to avenge that crime ; his dreams—if we may take him to mean literally what he said—were the signs and the effects of an exhaustion of nervous energy which ndght have overthrown a less strong mind in madness. Over-work and anxiety are well-known causes of sleepless nights and bad dreams ; but in some cases of supposed over-work I am convinced that the evil result which excites alarm is owing not so much to overstrain of mind as to im- prudent excess in other respects. The over-indulgences of life are really more to blame in such cases. The man of business goes through the daily routine of his work with no more variety of im})ressions than is occasioned by an extra cause of worry or
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3