Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/20

 Thus diseases in the stomach induce torpor and costiveness in the alimentary canal. Thus too local inflammation often induces coldness and insensibility in contiguous parts of the body. Or, 2d, they are induced by the reaction of the mind from the impressions which produce madness, being of such a nature as to throw its morbid excitement upon those viscera with so much force as to produce inflammation and obstructions in them. That they are induced by one, or by both these causes, I infer from the increased secretion and even discharge of bile which succeed a paroxysm of anger; from the pain in the left side, or spleen, which succeeds a paroxysm of malice or revenge; and from the pain, and other signs of disease in the bowels and stomach which follow the chronic operations of fear and grief. That the disease and disorders of all the viscera that have been mentioned, are the effects, and not the causes of madness, I infer further from their existing for weeks, months and years in countries subject to intermitting fevers, without producing madness, or even the least alienation of the mind.

4. Madness, it has been said, is the effect of a disease in the nerves. Of this, dissections afford us no proofs; on the contrary, they generally exhibit the nerves after death from madness in a