1828.) | Insanity. 451 
affairs, as much as possible, into his own hands? Why shouid we volun- 
tarily throw ourselves, blindfold, into other people’s power ? 
Is madness a disease of the mind or the body? Of the body, doubt- 
less. But let us get into no metaphysics—much less into the doubts and 
difficulties of theology. We know nothing, physically, of the mind, but 
through the body. For any thing we actually know, the mind is the 
sheer result of admirable mechanism. Of the union of an independent 
body and an independent mind, we know nothing. We affirm nothing, 
certainly, of the mind, uninfluenced by the body. We enter not into the 
question of materialism: it is unconnected with the view we take of the 
subject. We must, however, speak popularly—the mind and the body. 
Mental disease, uncaused by external impressions, is scarcely intelligible. 
Sensations are excited from without and within; and in both may, in 
excess, become the cause of insanity. The process is shortly this— 
External impressions—in proportion, of course, to constitutional suscep- 
tibility—act, through the senses and nerves, upon the feelings ; and the 
feelings re-act upon the brain. The impression is, in fact, double: first, 
upon the senses, next upon the heart—almost, perhaps quite, simulta- 
neously. The nerves and the circulation are thus both implicated ; 
and thus, by excess of action, moral irapressions of all kinds may 
become causes of insanity. But the moral is not the immediate cause— 
it is productive of a physical one, which is in reality the immediate—the 
proximate cause of derangement; and to the physical effects must we 
direct our main attention. 
Now these moral causes are within every body’s observation, and every: 
body can estimate the first effects. Some, without weighing the force 
of their expressions, have denied the influence of mind on matter ; but 
the fact of effects upon the body—of even diseases, both of structure and 
function, produced by mental emotions—is established by a thousand 
proofs. The heart, stomach, liver, intestines, kidneys, &c. are often 
violently affected by the gonsequences of passion. The ancients referred 
particular passions to particular viscera—courage to the heart, anger to 
the liver, joy to the spleen, &c. ; and even modern physicians of great 
eminence have done nearly the same. But we have nothing to do but 
with recognizable facts. : ! 
Sensations, emotions, passions, are all accompanied by bodily changes ; 
yet these are all excited by impressions from without—that is, are all 
instances of mind acting upon matter, before matter acts upon mind—are 
all moral causes. 
Modesty betrays itself by a stmple blush, which vanishes with the 
exciting cause, and scarcely produces any farther perceptible effect ; but 
shame shews a deeper suffusion—a more permanent one ; the blood is, 
in a peculiar manner, retained in the vessels nearest the surface, as if the 
veins had suffered some sudden constriction, and refused to return it. This 
sensation, in its excesses, is known to have produced other physical effects 
of an extraordinary kind—suppressions, insanity, death. Esquirol, a 
French physician, records his attendance upon a “ lady, who became 
insane on the wedding night, from shame, on sleeping with a man; and 
also another, who, though she loved her husband to excess, was deranged 
at the nuptial approach.” f 
_ Diffidence is another modification of modesty, which has brought on 
mental derangement. Cowper the poet is quoted by Dr. Burrowes as 
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