Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / By Amariah Brigham.

  • Amariah Brigham
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / By Amariah Brigham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    60/98 (page 54)
    he saw very few cases of mental derang’ement among' the American savag'es. In such countries the spirit of inquiry and improvement is seldom awakened, or is soon stifled when it is; and the inhabitants exhibit but little more mental excitement than the brute creation. In all countries, the disease prevails most among- those whose minds are most excited. Aristotle noticed, in his day, the great prevalence of insanity among statesmen and politicians. It is said, the disease prevails most among those w^hose minds are excited by hazardous speculations, and by works of imagination and taste; and but little among those whose minds are exercised only by calm inquiry. The registers of the Bicetre, in France, shew that the insane of the educated classes consist chiefly of priests, painters, sculptors, poets, and musi¬ cians ; while no instance of the disease in naturalists, physicians, geometricians, or chemists has occurred.* In all ages and countries, insanity has prevailed most in times of great moral and mental commotion. The Crusades, and the spirit of chivalry that followed them, the Reformation of Luther, the civil and religious dis¬ cords of Europe, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, greatly multiplied cases of insanity.'!' So true is it, that moral and mental causes excite this disease, that Esquirol says, he “ could give the history of the revolution, from the taking of the Bastile until the last appearance of Buonaparte, by that of some lunatics, whose insanity relates to the events which have distin-^ guished this long period.” Not only do the commotions which powerfully affect the minds of people, occasion immediate insanity in adults, but they predispose the next generation to this terrible disease ; and this is a fact that deserves great con¬ sideration. Esquirol says, that many women, strongly affected by the events of the revolution, bore children, whom the slightest cause rendered insane. He is sup¬ ported by others in this opinion, that strong mental emotion of the mother predisposes the offspring to insanity. Children do not, indeed, often become insane, though they do occasionally, from strong mental excitement, and injudicious development of the moral faculties. Esquirol has seen children rendered insane by jealousy, by fear, and the severity of their parents; and Pinel has * Conolly. — [Surely the author has been partially misled in this particular. — S.] f Esquirol. Rush. Voison.