Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/23

 There is nothing specific in these actions. They are a part of the unity of disease, particularly of fever; of which madness is a chronic form, affecting that part of the brain which is the seat of the mind.

My reasons for believing the cause of madness to be seated in the blood-vessels of the brain are drawn,

I. From its remote and exciting causes, many of which are the same with those which induce fever and certain diseases of the brain, particularly phrenitis, apoplexy, palsy and epilepsy, all of which are admitted to have their seats in a greater or less degree to the blood-vessels. Of thirty-six dissections of the brains of persons who had died of madness, Mr. Pinel says he could perceive no difference between the morbid appearances in them, and in the brains of persons who had died of apoplexy and epilepsy. The sameness of these appearances, however, do not prove that all those diseases occupy the same parts of the brain: I believe they do not, especially in their first stage: they become diffused over the whole brain, probably in their last stages, or in the paroxysm of death. Dr. Johnson, of Exeter, in speaking of the diseases of the abdominal viscera,