Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/35

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On the Diseases

Chapter II.

Of the remote and existing causes of intellectual derrangement.

I ha?e combined both these classes of caoses, inasmuch as they most commonly act in concert, or in a natural succession to each other. In en- umerating them, I shall include such as act alike in producing partial and universal madness. They have been divided, 1, into such as act, dirtdfy upon the body; and, 2, such as act om&- rmdhf upon the body, through the medium of the mind. To the first head belong, I, all those causes which act directhf upon the brain. These are, I, makonformation and Issions of the brain. Be- tween the latter, and the existence of madness, there is sometimes an interval of several years. A young man died in the Pennsylvania Hospital in the year 1809, who became deranged at twenty-