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Subtitle: And a Description of the Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1838 Original Publisher: Holdsworth Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. If our theory be correct, that Insanity, in all its various forms and modifications, is in reality a disease of the brain and nervous system, the immediate causes of it may evidently be reduced into two classes: -- the first class consisting of those which act primarily on the brain and nervous system; the second, of those which cause disease in them merely by sympathy. But before we proceed with this part of our subject, it will be necessary to make some observations on the hereditary predisposition to insanity, which exists in different individuals. That there are certain constitutions in which there is an evident predisposition to particular diseases, is too well known to admit of the slightest doubt. The natural conformation points out some persons as particularly susceptible of apoplexy and phthisis; others, again, from birth are liable to bilious diseases: analogy, therefore, independent of experience, would lead us to infer, that it is mostprobable that the same tendency to morbid action which exists in other parts of the body should also be found in the brain. Again; as we find that children resemble their parents in conformation of the body, in feature and complexion, and even in the colour of the eyes and the hair, it is but reasonable to conclude that there should be a like resemblance in the structure of the brain and nervous system; and that as other diseases, for instance gout, scrofula, phthisis,

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