The Construction of Hospitals for the Insane
PART I.
Chapters 1 - 10More to come...
CHAPTER II
DEFINITIONS OF INSANITY.
IT is not proposed even to attempt to give, in a few words, a definition of insanity which, while including all its forms, will not embrace anything that does not rightfully belong to it. This has been undertaken over and over again, and has always proved a failure. Nevertheless, there are a few persons—either among the learned or unlearned—who do not understand with sufficient clearness for our present purpose, the meaning of the term; and although they may not be competent to decide upon that not rare class of cases, which every now and then come up to puzzle the wisdom of both the legal and medical professions, they still have sufficiently accurate ideas of the disease, and the ordinary forms of it, for the custody and treatment of which institutions have to be provided. They commonly understand that it is in general, functional in its character, a disorder affecting the mind, or more properly the brain, as the organ of the mind. The derivation of the word insanity implying simply unsoundness, it can readily be understood that mental unsoundness actually comprises all its forms, notwithstanding this term may include conditions that are not properly embraced under what is usually styled insanity. All are to remember that insanity is often more clearly shown by what an individual does, than by what he says, and that a change in a man's natural character, without any obvious cause, may safely be regarded as one of the most reliable indications of the disease, and it requires little familiarity with it, to know that an individual, who is unquestionably insane, may still transact ordinary business, or engage in general conversation without any exhibition of delusions.