The study of mental disease : being the introductory lecture delivered in the University of Edinburgh on the institution of the Lectureship on Mental Diseases, May 1879 / by T.S. Clouston.

Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of mental disease : being the introductory lecture delivered in the University of Edinburgh on the institution of the Lectureship on Mental Diseases, May 1879 / by T.S. Clouston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    I do not say that our knowledge of brain function in its large aspect, and the influences that affect it in the individual or the family, is as yet mature enough to do all these things ; but how- shall we know if we do not study? and are not many minds better than a few, and more likely to attain fuller knowledge of the matter ? There is a curious sort of morbid delicacy, too, in the public mind about the matter, which often prevents a man, when he feels his mental balance not so secure, from consulting his doctor. That abominable and cruel phase of public sentiment, which con- nects shame and disgrace with mental disease, does an immense amount of harm to individuals and to society, and our profession should by all means fight against it. That this prejudice of the Middle Ages should exist at all, is the strongest proof of the general ignorance of the matter. Except our profession makes the study of mental disease more general, we shall never be able fully to combat and overcome this most injurious public feeling, because it is only by professional and scientific study that we get over the ideas of repulsiveness to many facts of nature. It was only when they were scientifically studied that surgery and midwifery overcame the ancient prejudices against them. The first thing the physician in his capacity of medical psycho- logist has to do, is to form in his own mind a standard of health. And to do this he has to go to nature. He can no more do it from books than he can form a conception of the healthy breathing or heart spunds from books. He has to do with man as he exists in nature in all the stages of his mental development. No ideal man as he ought to be will suit his purposes. If- he adopted such a standard, he would be inclined to look on very many of the people he met out of sorts mentally, and fit for segregation from their fellows. He cannot, like the clergyman, go to his Scriptures or his church and find his ideal; he cannot look on man as A Mind or A Soul with a troublesome body attached; he cannot shut the roads to his senses, and construct out of his subjective knowledge the man or the mind that is to be of service to him for comparison; he cannot even look on him as. a bundle of faculties, feelings, and potentialities tied together with the small cord of life. His method of study must be the physiological method, assisted, as far as they can be depended upon, by his own subjective experiences and those of his patients. How is the function of sensation studied? By accurate and scientific observation as to the parts of the body where it is present, by measurements of the degree in which it resides in different organs, by examination into the nerves that convey peripheral impressions to the brain, how they end in the tissues, where they go to in the cord and in the brain. In this investigation the subjective sensations of the patient are essential, but could we ever have had any real scientific knowledge of the function of sensation had we trusted to this alone ? Animals can- not express their sensations in words, and yet where would our know-