Mental Diseases and Their Modern Treatment | Page 9

from civilization, would make immeasurable mutilations. What empty shelves in our libraries; what vacant spaces on the walls of our galleries of art; what grand structures, the Inspirations of genius and of faith, would disappear! What rents would be made in laws, in constitutions, in religious creeds! But more impossible to estimate than all else would be the weakening of the intellectual fiber, and the depletion of the intellectual strength, of the living brain. It is by considering these great men whose displacement would wrench the world; it is by studying and trying to measure their work, that we come, in part, to appreciate the capabilities of the human brain. Biography when truthful, and the subject is noble as well as great, is one of the most useful of studies. Nothing else gives us such grand ideas of our nature, such consciousness of strength, such buoyancy of hope, such honorable pride. Nothing else fills us with such longings, or so stirs emulation, and stimulates action; and nothing else imposes upon us more forcibly the importance of correct mental training.
We have pointed out very briefly, some of the normal functions of the brain and mind, in order that we may understand more readily those departures from the normal status which constitute the disease known as insanity. We shall in our next lecture seek to disclose those conditions, and impulses, and forces, which tend to the production of mental disorder; "but that is another story".
Lecture II THE INSANE DIATHESIS OR ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF THE HUMAN MIND
It has been truly said that "man is the product of his antecedents multiplied by his environments". Our lecture today will concern both of these factors in the sum of human experience.
Dr. Duncan, of Chicago, classifies babies under two heads,--namely, the "acid" and the "alkaline", and from such a physiological standpoint he argues new methods by which our infant population may be best trained in the way it should grow. Dr. Grauvogel, in his metaphysics of medicine, entitled 'The Test Book of Homoeopathy', designates the various constitutions of the human body as "hydrogenoid", "oxygenoid", and "carbo-nitrogenoid". As inherent characteristics may be thus classified and designated, why is it not equally legitimate to specify other natural or acquired mental abnormalities by terms of a similar basic import?
Mental abnormality is always due to either imperfect or eccentric physical development, or to effects of inborn or acquired physical disease, or to injurious impressions, either ante-natal or post-natal, upon that delicate and intricate physical structure known as the human brain. Some physical imperfections more than others give rise to mental derangements. Some persons, more than others, when affected by any bodily ailment, tend to aberrated conditions of the mind. Some impressions, more than others, are peculiarly unfortunate by reason of their corroding effects upon the brain tablets of a sensitive mind. To these natural defects and unnatural tendencies, we apply, in a general way, the term "The Insane Diathesis". This is a state or condition in mental pathology corresponding to those diatheses so common in physical pathology, namely, the scrofulous, the cancerous, the scorbutic, the rheumatic, the gouty, and the calculous. The insane diathesis is a general term applying to all those conditions which tend to the inception and growth of mental unsoundness. This diathesis may be either inherited or acquired. In the former case it may be compared to the scrofulous; and in the latter, to the gouty diathesis.
Those who are born to become insane do not necessarily spring from insane parents, or from an ancestor having any apparent taint of lunacy in the blood. But they do receive from their progenitors, oftentimes, certain impressions upon their mental and moral, as well as upon their physical being, which impressions, like iron moulds, fix and shape their subsequent destinies. Hysteria in the mother may develop the insane diathesis in the child. Drunkenness in the father may impel epilepsy, or mania, or dementia, in the son. Ungoverned passions, from love to hate, from hope to fear, when indulged in overmuch by the parents, may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness in the minds of the children. Even untempered religious enthusiasm may beget a fanaticism that cannot be restrained within the limits of reason.
As the development of progress is slow and gradual, so likewise is the development of degeneracy. As men attain high moral and intellectual achievements only through the efforts of succeeding generations, so it seems but natural that the insane should oftentimes trace their sad humiliation and utter unfitness for the duties of life back through a tedious line of passion unrestrained, of prejudice, bigotry, and superstition unbridled, of lust unchecked, and of nerve resource wasted, exhausted, and made bankrupt before its time.
Here are dangers to the human race which potent drugs cannot avert. Here are maladies which medicines cannot cure.