Body and mind : an inquiry into their connection and mutual influence, specially in reference to mental disorders being the Gulstonian lectures for 1870, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians with appendix / by Henry Maudsley.
- Henry Maudsley
- Date:
- 1870
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Body and mind : an inquiry into their connection and mutual influence, specially in reference to mental disorders being the Gulstonian lectures for 1870, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians with appendix / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![11.] CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT. 55 Whence come the savage snarl, the destructive disposi. tion, the obscene language, the wild howl, the offensive habits, displayed by some of the insane ? Why should a human being deprived of his reason ever become so brutal in character as some do, unless he has the brute nature within him ? In most large asylums there is one, or more than one, example of a demented person who truly ruminates : bolting his food rapidly, he retires after- wards to a corner, where at his leisure he quietly brings it up again into the mouth and masticates it as the cow does. I should take up a long time if I were to enume- rate the various brute-like characteristics that are at times witnessed among the insane; enough to say that some very strong facts and arguments in support of Mr. Dar- win's views might be drawn from the field of morbid psy- chology. We may, without much difficulty, trace savagery in civilization, as we can trace animalism in savagery ; and in the degeneration of insanity, in the unkinding, so to say, of the human kind, there are exhibited marks denoting the elementary instincts of its composition. It behoves us, as scientific inquirers, to realize dis- tinctly the physical meaning of the progress of human intelligence from generation to generation. What struc- tural differences in the brain are implied by it ? That an increasing purpose runs through the ages, and that the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns, no one will call in question; and that this progress has been accompanied by a progressive development of the cerebral hemispheres, the convolutions of which have in- creased in size, number, and complexity, will hardly now](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20407750_0071.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
