A treatise on those disorders of the brain and nervous system : which are usually considered and called mental / By David Uwins.

  • Uwins, David, 1780-1837.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on those disorders of the brain and nervous system : which are usually considered and called mental / By David Uwins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    or evil report attend their endeavours, is to pursue the only justifiable policy, and eventually to insure the happiest results. What is a nervous disorder? In one sense, as well remarked by Dr. Beddoes, all maladies are ne- cessarily and essentially nervous; the very term disease implying pain, and pain not being produ- cible in any other way than through the medium of the nervous organization. We often, however, meet with cases in which the perceptions are deranged, without any obvious or demonstrable cause. A physician, for example, shall be called to a female invalid, who, when well, was conspicuously alive to all the duties and delights of maternal relationship; she is now listless, and unsusceptible of either pleasurable or painful emo- tion. In common parlance she is in a nervous state. If she is told to be up and active—if she be appealed to as a wife and mother—if vivid repre- sentations are placed before her, respecting the in- jury she is inflicting both on herself and all about her ; she may subscribe to the abstract truth of your truisms, but she goes no further. Her belief does not influence her conduct. But let one of her in- fants be suddenly snatched from the domestic circle by the grasp of disease, and laid probably on the bed of death, and what a change will be instanta- neously operated ! All the anxieties and alarms of a mother are now called forth from their hidino- places; motives and actions are changed. The dis- order has disappeared ; and thus has incident in-