A response to a professor and a speculation on the sensorium / by Bennet Dowler.

  • Bennet Dowler
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A response to a professor and a speculation on the sensorium / by Bennet Dowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    14/18
    Dr. Reid truly says, that, Sensation can be nothing else than it is felt to be. Its very essence consists in being felt; and when it is not felt, it is not. There is no difference between the sensation and the feeling of it; they are one and the same thing. Now, if sensational cognition be restricted to sensorial point in the centre of the brain or spinal cord, it can only be known by experience, and every sane per- son could testify to its truth, since this truth, if truth it be, is not of such a character, so recondite as to require profound learning as in many astronomical calculations. Newton had no more knowledge of nature of giaviiation, in itself, independent of its laws, than the savage of the wilderness. A fruiterer can judge as well concerning the taste of a sweet or a sour orange, as a La Place. As, therefore, the most learned physiologist is unacquainted with the nature of sensation, and knows nothing of any central point adapted to that end, his testimony is, in this particular case, very little better than that of the unlearned. If we take the testimony of mankind generally, as to the seat of sensation, perhaps, not one in a million will even so much as think of a point in tne brain, as possessing exclusive sensational and volitional jurisdiction, which every one ought to be conscious of, if it be true. If the fundamental doctrine of phrenology be true, the faculties of the mind have many different seats; a topographical distribution favor- able to division, though the system claims vastly too much for the brain; too much for true science. Phrenologists, says Dr. Mayo, have thrown their work into a great number of pigeon holes, and have separated, very arbitrarily, into small parcels, what more skilful theorists would have collected into larger masses. [Elem. Pathol. Mind, 20.] Partial insanity—derangement of special faculties, often in relation to one subject alone, (monomania,) affords a presumptive proof that the mind is dillused, rather than concentrated in one sensorial spot. That a single point should be the seat of all the mental faculties, and their diseases, and that a disease of this point should aflect one faculty, and not the others equally seated in this same point, must appear very im- probable, and very little analogous to the pathology of diseases in general; as these latter have many seats, and not one only. The entire oneness or unity of volition, in even the natural or undi- vided state of an organized being, may be questioned. Simultaneous, different, and conflicting trains of thought, sensation, and volition, are cognizable in both the waking and sleeping states. In dreams, in dis- eases, and in mental derangement, a multiformity of co-existing voli- tions seems to be indicated in many cases. Personal identity appears to be lost or divided. The individual imagines himself a plurality or duality, or trinity ; one thinking, willing, talking, arguing, disputing, and acting after a particular manner ; the other in a manner quite diff erent. Suppose a multiform will, or a leading will, with co-existing sub-wills, tlie former ruling the latter, (as mesmerists and electro-biolo- gists pretend to rule their subjects), combining the latter, conformably to rational ends, when in health, but during sickness, or mental disease, losing this control and unity ; then, it might be expected, that voli-