Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/105

INS- Madrid ; but its teeth were gone ; and it could do little but show a murderous will. The last capital punishments were those of a Jew who was burnt, and a Quaker school master hanged, in Spain in 182G. Still, its voice is sometimes heard; in 1856 Pius IX. issued an encyclical against somnambulism and clairvoyance, calling on all bishops to inquire into and suppress the scandal, and in 1865 he uttered an anathema against freemasons, the secular foes of the Inquisition. The occupation of Rome in 1870 (see ITALY) drove the papacy and the Inquisition into the Vatican, and there at last John Bunyan s vision seems to have found fulfilment. Yet, though powerless, the institution is not hopeless ; the Catholic writers on the subject, after long silence or uneasy apology, now acknowledge the facts, and seek to justify them. In the early times of the Holy Office its friends gave it high honour ; Paramo, the inquisitor, declares that it began with Adam and Eve ere they left Paradise ; Paul IV. announced that the Spanish Inquisition was founded by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit ; Muzarelli calls it " an indispensable substitute to the church for the original gift of miracles exercised by the apostles." And now again, from 1875 to this day, a crowd of defenders has risen up : N S 95 Father Wieser and the Innsbruck Jesuits in their journal (1877) yearn for its re-establishment; Orti y Lara in Spain, the Benedictine Gams in Germany, and C. Poullet in Belgium take the same tone ; it is a remarkable phenome non, due partly to despair at the progress of society, partly to the fanaticism of the late pope, Pius IX. It is hardly credible that any one can really hope and expect to see in the future the irresponsible judgments of clerical intolerance again humbly carried out, even to the death, by the secular arm. In the mass of literature on the subject, the most important works are -N. Eymerich, Dircctoriwn Inquisitorum, Rome, 1587 ; F. Valdes, Edict establishing Procedure, &c., Madrid, 1561 ; L. de Paramo (a Sicilian inquisitor), DC originc ct progrcssu Offlcii Sanctse Inquisitionis, ejusqiic dignitatc ct utilitatc, Madrid, 1598; Philip van Limborch, Historia Inquisitionis, cui yubjungitur Liber Sentcntiarum inquisitionis Tholosanse, Amsterdam, 1692 ; and the Abbe Marsollier s Histoire de I Inquisition ct de son Originc, Cologne, 1693, a work based on Limborch ; J. A. Lloreute, Historia critica de la inquisition de Espana, Madrid, 1812, 1813 ; Gams, Kirchcngeschichtc von Spanicn, vol. iii. pt. 2, Ratisbon, 1876 ; F. Hoffman, Geschichte dcr Inquisition, 2 vols., Bonn, 1878; Molinier, L Inquisition dans le midi dc la France au trcizieme et au quatorzieme Sieclc, 1880. The modern defenders of the Inquisition are F. J. G. Rodrigo, Historia vcrdadcra dc la Inquisicion, 3 vols., Madrid, 1876, 1877 ; and ,T. M. Orti y Lara, La Inquisicion, Madrid, 1877. (G. W. K.) INSANITY INSANITY is a generic term applied to certain morbid mental conditions produced by defect or disease of the brain. The synonyms in more or less frequent use are mental disease, alienation, derangement or aberration, mad ness, unsoundness of mind. There are many diseases of the general system productive of disturbance of the mental faculties which, either on account of their transient nature, from their being associated with the course of a particular disease, or from their slight intensity, are not included under the head of insanity proper. From a strictly scientific point of view it cannot be doubted that the fever patient in his delirium, or the drunkard in his excitement or stupor, is insane that, the brain of either being under the influence of a morbific agent or of a poison, the mental faculties are deranged ; yet such derangements are regarded as functional disturbances, i.e., disturbances produced by agencies which experience tells will, in the majority of cases, pass off within a given period without permanent results on the tissues of the organ, The comprehensive scientific view of the position is, that all diseases of the nervous system, whether primary or secondary, congenital or acquired, should, in the words of Griesinger, be regarded as one inseparable whole, of which the so-called mental diseases comprise only a moderate proportion. However important it may be for the physician to keep this principle before him, it may be freely admitted that it cannot be carried out fully in practice, and that social considerations compel the medical profession and the public at large to draw an arbitrary line between such functional diseases of the nervous system as hysteria, hypochondriasis, and delirium on the one hand, and such conditions as mania, melancholia, and dementia on the other. All attempts at a short definition of the term insanity have proved unsatisfactory ; perhaps the nearest approach to accuracy is attained by the rough statement that it is a chronic disease of the brain inducing chronic disordered mental symptoms the term disease being used in its widest acceptation. But even this definition is at once too comprehensive, as under it might be included certain of the functional disturbances alluded to, and too exclusive, as it does not comprehend certain rare transitory forms. Still, taken over all, this may be accepted as the least defective short definition; and moreover it possesses the great practical advantage of keeping before the student the primary fact that insanity is the result of disease of the brain, that it is not a mere immaterial disorder of the intellect. In the earliest epochs of medicine the corporeal character of insanity was generally admitted, and it was not until the superstitious ignorance of the Middle Ages had obliterated the scientific, though by no means always accurate, deductions of the early writers that any theory of its purely psychical character arose. At the present day it is unnecessary to combat such a theory, as it is universally accepted that the brain is the organ through which mental phenomena are manifested, and therefore that it is im possible to conceive of the existence of an insane mind in a healthy brain. On this basis insanity may be de fined as consisting in morbid conditions of the brain, the results of defective formation or altered nutrition of its substance induced by local or general morbid processes, and characterized especially by non-development, obliteration, impairment, or perversion of one or more of its psychical functions. Thus insanity is not a simple condition ; it comprises a large number of diseased states of the brain, which have been gathered under one popular term on account of mental defect or aberration being the predomi nant symptom. The insanities are sharply divided into two great classes the Congenital and the Acquired. Under the head of Congenital Insanity fall to be considered all cases in which, from whatever cause, brain development has been arrested, with consequent im potentiality of development of the mental faculties ; under that of Acquired Insanity all those in which the brain has been born healthy, but has suffered from morbid processes affecting it primarily, or from diseased states of the general system implicating it secondarily. In studying the causation of these two great classes, it will be found that certain remote influences exist which are believed to be commonly predisposing ; these will be considered as such, leaving the proximate or excit ing causes until each class with its genera comes under review. In most treatises on the subject will be found discussed the bearing which civilization, nationality, occupation, education, &c., have, or are supposed to have, on the production of insanity. Such discussions are generally