562 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE MENTAL ASPECTS OF ORDINARY DISEASE. 1 



By J. MILNEE F0THEEG1LL, M. D., 



JUNIOE PHYSICIAN TO THE WEST LONDON HOSPITAL. 



SO long as the mind was regarded as something separated from the 

 body, or only united to it by feeble ties, bodily conditions could 

 have nothing to do with mental phenomena insanity was a disease 

 of the soul. The monk, standing over a miserable lunatic chained to 

 a staple in the wall, and flogging him in order to make him cast his 

 devil out, was a logical outcome of this hypothesis. The union of 

 psychology and physiology is the closing of the circuit, in one direc- 

 tion, of the pursuit after knowledge, and marks the initiation of a 

 rational comprehension of the mind and of its relation to corporeal 

 conditions. How such mistaken ideas of the word melancholia, as 

 those entertained by the monk in his capacity of physician for diseases 

 of the mind, could have attained their sway in the face of the maxim 

 mens sana in corpore sano, only becomes intelligible when we re- 

 member the ignorance, the superstitious prejudices, the contempt for 

 knowledge of the natural man, which found their highest expression 

 during the monkish supremacy of the dark ages. Slowly but surely 

 was the emancipation of the intellect from the fetters of priestly tyran- 

 ny achieved. The days of the minor Trinity the soul, the mind, and 

 the body are numbered ; the advent of a physiological psychology is 

 at hand. That insanity which was regarded as an indication of some 

 disease of the soul, in whose production the body had no share, is now 

 known to be linked with appreciable pathological changes, and :n 

 many instances is amenable to physical remedial agents. Thought is 

 the product of the cells of the gray matter of the brain the result 

 of a change of form in inorganic matter taken into the system as food, 

 of which acids and other products of oxidation, of retrograde tissue- 

 metamorphosis, are the waste. 



Such being the case, it is obvious, then, that bodily conditions will 

 affect the nutrition of the brain, or rather of the cerebral cells, and so 

 modify their products. It is not necessary to go into the more pro- 

 nounced conditions called insanity for the evidences of such influence; 

 they are to be found in the varying mental attitudes of common life. 

 It is true, however, that the study of the more marked cases furnished 

 by insanity, with their deeper shadows and clearer definitions, is the best 

 preparation for the proper recognition and discrimination of the finer 

 shades, the slighter changes, which exist among the sane. More 

 especially is this the case in attempting to analyze the varying emo- 

 tions. At one time all looks bright, cheerful, and encouraging ; at 

 another, the same prospect looks cheerless and tinted with despair. 

 1 Condensed from the Journal of Mental Science. 



