Medical
Inquiries and Observations
on
The Diseases of the Mind.Chapter I.
Of the Faculties and Operations of the Mind, and on the Proximate Cause and Seat of Intellectual Derangement.
In entering upon the subject of the following Inquiries and Observations, I feel as if I were about to tread upon consecrated ground. I am aware of its difficulty and importance, and I thus humbly implore that Being, whose government extends to the thoughts of all his creatures, so to direct mine, in this arduous undertaking, that nothing hurtful to my fellow citizens may fall from my pen, and that this work may be the means of lessening a portion of some of the greatest evils of human life.
