It appears from all that we know of their nature and constitution, that animals in general are not subject to mental disease of any description, at any rate in a mode corresponding with that in which it affects mankind. Indeed from their not being endowed with intellectual faculties, it would seem that in their case there is no substratum in which disease of this kind could exist. Having no mental machinery to become disordered, it is difficult to conceive how they can be liable to derangement of this sort. In those instances where their instinctive endowments appear to act erroneously, this is caused not by any actual disease of their spiritual being, but by that of the material frame, more especially of the sensorial system, which acts upon and stimulates the action, and consequently largely influences the operations, of such spiritual being.

11. Mental Pathology, its Principles and its End.

From what has been here laid down on the subject of mental discase, its essence, source and development, we may I think with a rational degree of a certainty, arrive at the opinion that as complete and scientific a system of medical treatment for the maladies of the mind might be established, as for those of the body, if our acquaintance with the economy and mode of operation of the former, equalled what we know of those of the latter. In the case of material disease, a perfect system of patho

2

detailed them at length in the address quoted from, which contains his mature, and deliberate, and well-considered opinion on the subject, I quote them from that address:

66

The royal road to success in combating disease, lies, it is surmised, in knowledge of symptoms and remedies, and use of instruments for cure. Perfect knowledge of function, it is assumed, is very good for the student to learn, necessary for the teacher to sustain, interesting for the busy practitioner to possess, but cumbersome and laborious, and of small service for him to retain. Oh! sad delusion. As no study is more elevating and expanding than the study of the living organism and its functions, so to the obedient and free mind none is so easy; none so easy because of this beauty of it, that what is learned as new serves only to fix more persistently on the memory what has already been learned; none so easy because the simplicity of the study increases in proportion as the scope of it extends, and the unities of action are discovered; none so easy because a knowledge of the whole elucidates parts, and reduces the complex, I mean the apparently complex, into simple harmonies."

2 "As in medicining the body, it is in order first to know the divers complexions and constitutions; secondly, the diseases; and, lastly, the cures: so, in medicining of the mind, after knowledge of the divers characters of men's natures, it followeth in order to know the diseases and

THE OBJECT OF PATHOLOGY, MENTAL AND MATERIAL. 499

logy-if even here such a system can ever be hoped for-might be expected to comprehend, and should embrace, in the first place, a complete and exact knowledge of the cause of each malady; and, in the second place, a knowledge, correspondingly precise and perfect, of the mode of counteracting that cause: in other words, a knowledge of the remedy by counteraction of erroneous operation, as regards every disease.3

The main end and use probably of all pathology in case of disease, whether material or mental, is not to create or originate any new principle or impulse, but merely to correct some irregularity which is in operation. We seek not to alter or amend nature's laws, but only to restore their due course. We attempt to supply, not the deficiencies of nature, but the deficiencies which we, by our perversion of her system, have caused in her career. And for this purpose it seems that not only pathology for the body, but pathology for the mind, is mainly available. Our efforts must be directed, not to change the natural faculties or endowments which we possess, but to remedy those errors and perversions which bad habits have engendered, or wrong principles have established. Counteraction and correction, not new creation, is consequently the legitimate object of every system of this sort; which simply

infirmities of the mind, which are no other than the perturbations and distempers of the affections."--Lord Bacon. Advancement of Learning, b. ii.

3 On the main points raised in this paragraph, which I have had the advantage of discussing with Dr. Richardson, he tells me that he has expressed his opinion carefully and explicitly in the same address before quoted, to which therefore it will be most satisfactory to refer. He there says "that to be able at one flash of memory to take in the whole organic mechanism as though it were laid open before the eye, even as the works of the watch are open to the watchmaker; to see the central heart beating in the order of its work; the lungs expanding; the gases in the lungs diffusing, the blood oxidating; to see the stomach dissolving the food, the fluid food coursing into the circulation; to see the blood changing in its circuit, yielding up its colloids to the tissues, and retaining its crystalloids; to see the busy lympathics drawing off the superfluous plasma, and the glands separating and discharging their respective fluids; to see the nervous screens of the senses picking up impressions, and the brain receiving them; to see from its centres the animal force distributing from point to point; to see the sympathetic regulating function; and lastly, with this one grand view of structures and functions clear before the sight, to be able to detect how far perversion, observable in one function or part, influences other functions and parts, and excites those phenomena which constitute what are called the symptoms of disease, to see these things is to be a physician indeed, such an one as every physician should be."

According to Willis, we ought to know the several places or parts of the body in which medicines begin to operate, the subjects on which they operate as also how they operate upon the spirits-together with the several sorts of humours, and how medicines act upon them.-Works. Of the Operation of Medicines in Man's Body.

consists in the device of an artificial remedy intended to arrest some irregular operation, and to restore nature to her proper and ordinary condition. Medicine, therefore, ought only to go the length of counterbalancing, as it were, this deleterious influence, and of extinguishing it; but should not in any case aim to originate any new independent action of its own. So far as pathology is merely counteractive and restorative, it is harmless, and also beneficial. So far as it goes beyond this, and originates any operation of itself, it is not only harmless, but injurious. The result of medical treatment should be to bring back the system to where it was before the attack, and to place it in the same position as though the attack had never occurred. It should simply obliterate the mark of the wound, without leaving any trace of that of the cure.

Both in mental and material disease, we nevertheless frequently mistake for the disease itself, the efforts of nature to throw it off; and instead of attempting to cure the malady, counteract the operation which is in reality its best antidote. In this respect we act like children, who dislike and try to avoid taking the dose which is to cure them, far more than they do the disease which is to be cured. In mental and moral, as well as in material diseases, men often hate the medicine, quite as much as they do the malady. Medicines indeed, sometimes do violence to the system as well as to the inclination; although their ultimate end is to produce a restorative for the frame, and to relieve it from that violence by which it has been suffering. And in all cases of this kind, it behoves us to be specially careful that the regimen adopted to cure the complaint, does not of itself generate a malady far worse than that, which it was designed to remove. Some medicines are considerably more pernicious to the constitution, than are the very evils which they aim to eradicate. And we occasionally find after a long and patient endurance of intense suffering, that the doctor is far more difficult to drive from our doors than is the direst disease!

Remedies like education, are of two kinds, natural and artificial; and where that which is natural admits of application, it will generally be found to be the most efficient of the two. Thus, in many cases of mental disease, might the appropriate exercise of the mind, conjoined with the adoption of sound and wholesome moral and religious discipline, be found efficacious to correct some defect or derangement in the condition of the capacities, to regulate the ideas, to bring the operation of the faculties into a proper train, and to purify and ennoble the soul.

Philosophy is not, however, as Cicero considers it, so much

Tide ante, p. 124.

MEDICINE OF THE MIND.

501 the medicine of the mind, as a nourishing diet; it may be, a sort of tonic to restore it to a stronger condition. For each mental disease or failing, fitting mental remedies should be applied. Just as in the body we correct acidities, and laxities, and astringents, by particular appropriate medicines; so in the soul, we should correct narrowness, and prejudices, and evil habits, by corresponding intellectual regimen. And as, in the case of the material frame, diet is at once the surest and safest of all medicines; so, in the case of the soul, engaging it in some congenial occupation is the best corrective of its ailments, which is to be regarded perhaps rather as an aliment than a medicine, and one by which its course is not actually changed, or even deviated, but merely directed aright.

It is not improbable therefore that a system of mental pathology might be devised, far more complete and efficient than any which has been invented for the material frame. Indeed, the remedies which have been tried for the latter, have been ever uncertain, and varying, according as our knowledge of matter advances, or our opinions respecting it change. As the extent of our knowledge of mind is in proportion to our knowledge of matter; so is the extent of our skill in mental, to that of our skill in material medicine. We know but little about either; although I am inclined to think that our ignorance about matter is, on the whole, the most profound. It is indeed, almost a wonder, that as the diseases of the soul are quite as multifarious, as complicated, and as difficult to heal, as are those of the body; there are not physicians of the mind as well as of the material system, whose skill is devoted to curing and correcting the maladies of the former. That there are not, is a further proof how much more we care for the things that concern the body and matter, than for those of the mind.

The basis on which the science of medicine is founded, may therefore be defined to be this. That as there are certain deleterious causes, or occurrences, or operations, which affect the body in a certain mode, and occasion it to be disordered, and to act erroneously or irregularly, however healthy it might have been when it encountered them, and each of which influence it in a particular way; so there are also certain causes, or occurrences, or operations, either artificial or natural, which affect it in an opposite manner, and may tend to restore it when it is out of order, and lead it to act correctly and regularly, and the result of each of which is uniformly to influence it in a specific and determinate mode, according to their nature and

5 "The evidence for the existence of mind, is to the full as complete as that upon which we believe in the existence of matter. Indeed, it is more certain, and more irrefragable."-Lord Brougham. Discourse of Natural Theology.

tendency. This theory of medicine is applicable alike to our material, as also to our mental and moral being, and to diseases incident to each.

In a complete system of pathology, the producing causes of health, or rather of restoration to it, would be as certain and unerring as are the causes of disease. Both alike would be ascertained, and would be acted upon systematically. The science of medicine, mental and bodily, consists indeed essentially in reducing this knowledge and application of remedies to a system at once practical, positive, and perfect.

It may nevertheless happen, both in our material and mental system, that the most complete condition of health may of itself be a cause of, if it do not actually constitute, disease. As a very exuberant state of body may lead to plethora, and thence to death; so the highest cultivation of mind, and the ample storing it with ideas, together with the vigorous exercise of all its powers, may ultimately produce derangement of the system, and occasion disease of the direst kind.

In many cases moreover, both mental and material, the cure proposed is in reality, more to be dreaded, and occasionally proves more pernicious, than the very disease itself. The disease distorts and deforms the suffering member; but the effort to drive it away, destroys it altogether. Sickness disorders the frame; but the potion that is given to expel it, may infect and poison the whole system. Many who can bear the wound, break down under the lancet. Error may be pestilential; but the means resorted to to extirpate it, may be more so still, and may prove ruinous to the soul.

Both in mental and in physical sickness, however, not only is the nature of the disease frequently misunderstood; but it sometimes happens that the very symptoms of bealth are mistaken for discase: while the supposed exhibitions of extraordinary vigour are, in reality, but the spasmodic or delirious exertions of some malignant, though perhaps latent malady.

Diseases, moreover, both mental and material, change at different periods, assuming new forms and varieties, one disease disappearing and being supplied by another; such change originating, not in the diseases themselves, but in some alteration in the condition of the beings subject to them; and not unfrequently the cure of one disease operating as the producing cause of another. Diseases, both material and mental, eventually also appear to wear out and exhaust themselves, and gradually grow weaker and weaker; provided they do not, in the meantime wear out and exhaust the frame upon which they have fastened, between which and the disease a resolute contest is carried on, until one or the other is compelled to give way. Prejudice in particular is a mental discase which time