Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/365

 In all these cases of innate, preternatural moral depravity, there is probably an original defective organization in those parts of the body, which are occupied by the moral faculties of the mind.

How far the persons whose diseases have been mentioned, should be considered as responsible to human or divine laws for their actions, and where the line should be drawn that divides free agency from necessity, and vice from disease, I am unable to determine. In whatever manner this question may be settled, it will readily be admitted that such persons are, in a pre-eminent degree, objects of compassion, and that it is the business of medicine to aid both religion and law, in preventing and curing their moral alienation of mind. We are encouraged to undertake this enterprise of humanity, by the sameness of the laws which govern the body and the moral faculties of man. I shall venture to point out the sameness of those laws in a few instances, by mentioning the predisposition and proximate causes, the symptoms, and the remedies of corporeal and moral diseases.

I. Is debility the predisposing cause of disease in the body? so it is of vice in the mind.