The homoeopathic principle applied to insanity : a proposal to treat lunacy by spiritualism / by James John Garth Wilkinson.

  • Wilkinson, James John Garth, 1812-1899.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The homoeopathic principle applied to insanity : a proposal to treat lunacy by spiritualism / by James John Garth Wilkinson. 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.

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    ities, antecedents, and allies, in the brightest parts and prin- cipalities of this world’s history. The ancients felt this, and regarded mad folks with a kind of divine awe, if not with a Christian pity. For these insane we are now thinking of, set the unseen against the seen, live in faith against sight, and cherish the heart and the fancy as more than a coun- terpoise to the whole world. They are unsound in not recognizing both spheres ; yet it must be said, that they act upon the laws of existence beyond circumstance more than we. They are like a distorted ray from the beginnings of all religions. Nay, if any one of the immediate persons of the Christian revelation were here in London to-morrow, unless he had changed with the times, any two mad doc- tors I know would be consistently likely to consign him to an asylum; and when he got there, his narratives would be more acceptable to those inmates of whom I am now speaking, than his conversation could possibly be to the existing society of this metropolis. Miracle and vision, and take no thought for the morrow, and blessed are the peacemakers, and if ye have faith as a grain of mustard- seed, would not produce the negative and the struggle in Hanwell, that doth await them in the avenues of modern cities. And the unmistakable fact is, that numbers of patients now immured for life in lunatic asylums, for hold- ing to spiritual allegations and experiences, are neither more nor less than mediums, whose powers, often brought about by calamity, have been misapprehended and trun- cated ; and the whole being has been artificially subverted by unwitting society, in the destruction of those spirit- gifts, which are at once the sign of the disease, and, when rightly led forth and instructed, the waters of the rock of Christian cure. Here, then, is a basis to proceed upon: the patients are mediums presumptive, by the very fact of their delusions, of their huge faith, of their fiery tenacity, and of their self- circumscription. Now, how to develop their mediumship ?