Search -
On the prevention and treatment of mental disorders
On the prevention and treatment of mental disorders Author:George Robinson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. III. OF THE GENERAL PATHOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. Before entering upon the study of the pathology of mental disorders, it is most essential tha... more »t a clear and correct idea be formed of the peculiar and complicated relations of the brain. We have seen that for the healthy discharge of its functions, certain physico-vital conditions are requisite, the chief being the natural formation of the organ and the due nutrition and purification of its structures by streams of arterial blood. But even in a state of perfect health the functions of the brain, from their very nature, have a constant tendency to induce more or less disorder in its action. For as the great seat and centre of vital sympathy, it is called upon to receive, and respond to, every vibration indicative of injury or disease, which its attendant nerves may transmit to it from the innumerable organisms of the whole body. And what a boundless field of morbid sensations and other disturbing influences does this connection alone present to the student of cerebral pathology! We have, however, further to remember that the brain, being the instrument of the mind, is most intimately associated with the intellectual and moral parts of our nature, and is consequently liable to bedisordered in its action by all the varied agencies morbidly affecting the mind itself. Thus, at the very threshold of our inquiry, we find that the functions of the brain may be disturbed by three great classes of morbific causes, two of which act indirectly, the third directly, upon the conditions requisite for the healthy manifestation of its powers. The ultimate effect of the injurious influences operating upon the brain from the mind on the one hand, and from the rest of the body on the other, is probably to induce in it structural an...« less