CLASS IV. III. Intel perament; and the mind may, in like manner, possess an over-weening confidence and courage; be characteristically lectual dull and inactive; or be ever goaded on by restlessness principle. and eager desire; it may be quick in apprehension and taste, but weak in memory; strong in judgement, but slow in imagination; or feeble in judgement, but rapid in imagination: its feelings or passions may be sluggish, or all alive; or some passion may be peculiarly energetic, while the rest remain at the temperate point. When the from per deviations fect soundness of body slight, called diseases; but only when extreme. hardly severe or The same in the faculties of the When the corporeal deviations from the standard of high health are but slight, they are scarcely entitled to the name of diseases,—but when severe or extreme, they become subjects of serious attention. It is the same with the different states of the mind with which I have just contrasted them. While several, or even all the mental faculties are slightly weak or sluggish, or inaccordant with the action of the rest, they are scarcely subjects of medical treatment-for otherwise half the world would be daily consigned to a strait waistcoat: but when the same changes become striking and strongly marked, they are aberrations real DISEASES OF THE INTELLECT; and, in the ensuing scarcely order, the genera will be found taken from the peculiar but when faculties of the mind that chance to be thus affected. The mind and the body bear also, in many cases, a reciprocal influence on each other; which is sometimes general, and sometimes limited to particular faculties or functions. It is hence that fever or cephalitis produces delirium; and vapours or low spirits dyspepsy. The mind, therefore, like the body, becomes an interesting field of study to the pathologist, and opens to his view an additional and melancholy train of diseases. It is these which will constitute the subject of the first order of the class we have now entered upon, and which are entitled to a deep and collected attention. mind, slight noticed, strongly marked, real diseases. The mind and body reciprocally influence each other. Hence the mind an in teresting piece of study to the pathologist. 58 CLASS IV. NEUROTICA. ORDER I. PHRENICA. Biseases affecting the Zutellect. ERROR, PERVERSION, OR DEBILITY OF ONE OR MORE OF ORDER I. Phrenica. Affecting the intellect. Origin of the ordinal term. CLASS IV. THE Word PHRENICA is Greek from the Greek noun ov, the mind" or "intellect". The diseases comprised in the order, are so closely associated with each other that, however the ordinal names may differ in different systems of nosology, they are, for the most part, grouped in some form or other under a correspondent division. And hence the present order will be found to run nearly parallel with the Deliria of Sauvages, the Mentales of Linnéus, the Paranoia of Vogel, the Vesaniæ of Cullen, and still more with those of Crichton, and the Alié nation mentale of Pinel: although the generic divisions are widely different from all of them, and are attempted Comprises diseases closely associated: ⚫and hence united in almost all plans of nosology. to be rendered something clearer and more exact. order comprehends the six following: The CLASS IV. Phrenica. character. Each of these will be found to include various distinct General species of disorder proceeding from a morbid condition of one or more of the mental faculties or feelings, or an irrespondence of them to others; sometimes originating in a discased state of the body, and sometimes producing such a state, as has already been explained in the preceding proem. GEN. I. Origin of the generic term. Species arranged by different writers. Arrange ment of Cullen GENUS I. ECPHRONIA. Insanity. Craziness. DISEASED PERCEPTION, WITH LITTLE DERANGEMENT OF 66 THE generic term ECPHRONIA, in the Greek writers ἐκφρώνη οι ἐκφροσύνη, is derived from ἒκφρων “ extra mentem" —literally out of one's mind," as upgwv, is “ έμφρων, mentis compos" or "in one's mind." It is here used, as among the Greeks, generically alone, in the ordinary sense of insanity; and is designed to include the two following species: 1. ECPHRONIA MELANCHOLIA. MELANCHOLY. MADNESS. Each of these species has been regarded by many nodifferently sologists as forming a genus of itself, for which there seems to be no just reason. Dr. Cullen has thus arranged them in his synopsis, but has given them a different arrangement, and a very subordinate place in his Practice of Physic, so that in the two works, he is, in inconsistent this respect, altogether at variance with himself. In both, his order is entitled vesaniæ, which, in the first, includes fatuity, mania, melancholy and sleep-disturbance (oneirodynia), as distinct genera: but, in the last, takes for its genera delirium, fatuity, and oneirodynia. He con with himself. GEN. I. Ecphronia. templates delirium, moreover, as of two kinds, one combined with fever, and one without; the latter, he tells us is what we name insanity; and under this latter kind Craziness. alone, the apyrectic delirium or insanity, running synonymously with the present genus ecphronia, he proceeds to treat of melancholy and mania as species or subdivisions of it: throwing back the other kind of delirium to the class of fevers, as unconnected with the subject before him. So that, properly speaking, Dr. Cullen's order of vesaniæ should run parallel with the present order phrenica; the genera of which should be delirium and fatuitas; while mania and melancholy should be the species of delirium or the first genus. ment of various ters. That of Crichton, Parr, Young, Pinel, and most of the Ger- Arrangeman writers, contemplate these diseases under the same sort of specific subdivision. Parr, indeed, in his article other wriMANIA, asserts that both constitute nothing more than VARIETIES of one common species: yet, with an incon- Parr selfsistency which, amongst much that is excellent, is too inconfrequent to be met with in his Dictionary, he changes his gruous. opinion in the article NOSOLOGY, makes vesania the genus, and arranges melancholia, mania, and even oneirodynia, as separate species under it. Melancholy and mania pathogno mically distinguished from each other by the general consent of modern pathologists. Melancholy differently explained by The distinguishing characters, as the two species are contemplated by the generality of nosologists, are clear. In melancholy the alienation is restrained to a few objects or trains of ideas alone; in madness it is general. And it hence follows that gloom, gaiety, and mischievousness may equally exist under both species; according as these propensities are limited to a single purpose, or are unconfined and extend to every thing. Occasionally, however, among ancient writers we find melancholy insanity limited to insanity accompanied with gloom or despondency, without any attention to the universality or partiality of writers; the disease: for an undue secretion of melancholia, which whose explanation is only a Greek term for black bile or choler, was sup- has entered posed to be a common cause of mental dejection, and, into popular where it became habitual, to produce a low or gloomy language: temperament; to which the term melancholic has con some ancient |