I object to it, 3, because there are no instances of primary affections of the mind, such as grief, love, anger, or despair, producing madness until they had induced some obvious changes in the body, such as wakefulness, a full or frequent pulse, costiveness, a dry skin, and other symptoms of bodily indisposition.
I know it has been said in favour of madness being an ideal disease, or being seated primarily in the mind, that sudden impressions from fear, terror, and even ridicule, have sometimes cured it. This is true, but they produce their effects only by the healthy actions they induce in the brain. We see several other diseases, particularly hiccup, headach, and even fits of epilepsy, which are evidenly affections of the body, cured in the same way by impressions of fear and terror upon the mind.
Having rejected the abdominal viscera, the nerves, and the mind, as the primary seats of madness, I shall now deliver an opinion, which I have long believed and taught in my lectures, and that is, that the cause of madness is seated primarily in the blood-vessels of the brain, and that it depends upon the same kind of morbid and irregular actions that constitutes other arterial diseases.
