98 FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 



vomiting, indigestion, heartburn, to tlie stomach; cough, 

 asthma, to the lungs ; or any other deranged functions 

 to their corresponding organs. 



If the biliary secretion be increased, diminished, sus- 

 pended, or altered, we have no hesitation in referring to 

 changes in the condition of the liver, as the immediate 

 cause of these phenomena. We explain the state of respi- 

 ration, whether slow, hurried, impeded by cough, spasm, 

 &c. by the various conditions of the lungs, and other parts 

 concerned in breathing. These explanations are deemed 

 perfectly satisfactory. 



What should we think of a person who told us that the 

 organs have nothing to do with the business ; that colera, 

 jaundice, hepatitis, are diseases of an immaterial hepatic 

 being ; that asthma, cough, consumption, are affections of 

 a subtle pulmonary matter ; or that in both cases the dis- 

 order is not in bodily organs, but in a vital principle ? If 

 such a statement would be deemed too absurd for any se- 

 rious comment in the derangements of the liver, lungs, and 

 other organic parts, how can it be received in the brain ? 



The very persons who use this langua^-e of diseases of 

 the mind, speak and reason correctly respecting the other 

 affections of the brain. When it is compressed by a piece 

 of bone, or by effused blood or serum, and when all intel- 

 lectual phenomena are more or less completely suspended 

 they do not say that the mind is squeezed, that the imma- 

 terial principle suffers pressure. For the ravings of deli- 

 rium and phrensy, the excitation and subsequent stupor of 

 intoxication, they find an adequate explanation in the state 

 of the cerebral circulation, without fancying that the mind 

 is delirious, mad, or drunk. 



In these cases the seat of the disease, the cause of the 

 symptoms, is too obvious to escape notice. In many forms 

 of insanity the affection of the cerebral organization is less 

 strongly marked, slower in its progress, but generally very 

 recognizable, and abundantly sufficient to explain the dis- 

 eased manifestations — to afford a material organic cause for 



