The results of a long and diligently pursued investigation of the disorder termed mental derangement ... / by George Henry Cullis.

  • Cullis, George Henry.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The results of a long and diligently pursued investigation of the disorder termed mental derangement ... / by George Henry Cullis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    16/31 (page 15)
    16 in the maxill&ries to the action of the humours, which corrupting the blood, depraves the juices in the nerves of the brain, and induces disorderly motions to arise therein. Now, upon a subject of such vast importance to mankind, it has been said, “ Whoever enlarges our views of the preventible causes that lead to such an affliction, must he a public benefactorthe endeavour shall be further continued to prove by extracts from the works studied, the general correctness of the deductions just submitted. The first is from the ‘ Encyclopedia of Natural History’—article, ‘ Mental Derangement’—upon which the talented writer remarks “The name is evidently a faulty one, because to be diseased or deranged is quite incompatible with the simplicity of essence, and the eternity of duration which are the essential attributes of the mind. Even those diseases must be bodily, but as they do not necessarily and immediately produce any topical or systematic effects upon the body, which in its material structure follows the general law of material creatures, we are unable to point out where the disease lies, or in what it consists.” From ‘Barrow’s Universal Dictionary.’ On ‘ attenuants.’ “Since the purity and proper temperament of the vital juices depend upon the due secretion and excretion of everything superfluous and recre- mentitious in the constitution: it is therefore obvious that such medicines as remove obstructions must be excellent remedies against diseases, in which the humours have evidently lost their due temperament, and are become impregnated with viscid, sulphureous, and acrid principles.” On “The human body.” “ In order to form a just notion of the body of man, it ought to be considered as a hydraulic machine contrived with the most exquisite art, in which there are numberless tubes pro- perly adjusted and disposed for the conveyance of fluids of different kinds. Of these, the principal is the blood, from which are derived the humours subservient to the purposes of life, and in particular that subtile and remarkable elastic fluid generated in the brain, and known by the name of animal spirits, the instrument of sense and motion.” Mead's ‘Monita et Precepta.’ Here it may be stated that history records “ Dr. Mead spent fifty years of his life, in studying medicines for the relief of those disordered in their intellect,” and from Mead’s