An address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New-York, and the members of the legislature : at the capitol in the city of Albany, the 2d. of February, 1820, on the influence of the mind upon the body in the production and cure of diseases / by John Stearns, M.D. president of the society.

  • Stearns, John, 1770-1848.
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New-York, and the members of the legislature : at the capitol in the city of Albany, the 2d. of February, 1820, on the influence of the mind upon the body in the production and cure of diseases / by John Stearns, M.D. president of the society. 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.)

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    ADDRESS. BY THE PRESIDENT. Gentlemen, Anatomists have long since attained to such perfection in demonstrating the parts of the human frame, as to preclude their successors from any im- portant discoveries. The more variable science of diseases and their remedies, has been subjected to an investigation equally minute and complete ; and although the human mind has been explored, and alike exhausted of that interest, which the novelty of extravagant theories once attached to it, still a consideration of its operations and relations, in con- nection with the body, may be productive of bene- fit to the practitioner of medicine. In his attempts to explain the operations of the mind, the metaphysician often passes the confines of common sense, and envelopes the whole in a mys- tery, which reason cannot penetrate nor compre- hend. Thus confused, it seeks refuge in the skep- tic philosophy of Berkley and of Hume—adopting Locke's theory of ideas as competent to explain all the phenomena of nature, it rejects the existence of the whole external world ; or with Leibnitz errs in the opposite extreme, and fills universal space with an infinite variety of monads.—Without resorting to these and all similar speculations, unaided reason would investigate the operations of its own mind