Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/19

 2. Madness has been said to be the effect of a disease in the spleen. This viscus is supposed to be affected in a peculiar manner in that grade of madness which has been called hypochondriasis. For many years it was known in England by no other name than the spleen, and even to this day, persons who are affected with it are said to be spleeny, in some parts of the New England states.

3. A late French writer, Dr. Prost, in an ingenious work entitled "Medicine Eclairee par Observation et l'Overture des CorpsMédecine Éclairée par l'Observation et l'Ouverture des Corps [sic]" has. taken pains to prove that madness is the effect of a disease in the intestines, and particularly of their peritoneal coat The marks of inflammation which appear in the bowels in persons who have died of madness, have no doubt favoured this opinion; but these morbid appearances, as well as all those which are often met with in the liver, spleen, and occasionally in the stomach, in persons who have died of madness, are the effects and not the causes of the disease. They are induced either, 1st, by the violent or protracted exercises of the mind attracting or absorbing the excitement of those viscera, and thereby leaving them in that debilitated state which naturally disposes them to inflammation and obstruction.