Elements of the pathology of the human mind / [Thomas Mayo].

  • Thomas Mayo
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of the pathology of the human mind / [Thomas Mayo]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the will resumes its power, and the associations proceed in their ordinary flow under its con- trol. The case is different with insanity. Here the remission of delirium does not appear to involve any reassumption of the power of the will over the trains of thought; though no longer turbulent, they remain unregulated, as long as the disorder lasts. This is what might be expected to happen under the supposition that insanity is a disorder of the will itself, and phrenitis, a disorder of some other principle or principles, the lesion of which may disturb the will, and temporarily suspend it in the course of such disorder. I have limited myself in the above remarks to the disorder of the will, as the mental element im- plied by insanity. If under insanity the associ- ating principle act independently of the re- strictive or impulsive influence of the will, it must follow, that the judgment also must be constantly wrong, or, to speak more correctly, must be wrong or right by accident. On the other hand, it would be an assumption palpably unwarranted by that consent of mankind, which ultimately determines our use of language, if the errors of judgment were represented by me as proving the existence of insanity.
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