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Psychiatry in the 1880s

Psychological medicine occupies a position of authoritative science, to the elaboration of which has been directed, and is still being directed, the great ability of many of the most distinguished men in the ranks of medicine. Psychological research commands the respect of the enlightened world, because, industriously pursued from small beginnings and unsettled propositions, it has grown to the proportions of a well-defined and harmonious system of science. It has become the adjunct of jurisprudence in settling a class of difficult and otherwise inexplicable questions which arise in the administration of justice. The importance of psychology is evinced by the significant fact that the necessities of medical education demand that it shall be taught in the schools. Journals are especially devoted to its investigation, and, aided by hospitals and enlightened treatment, it has declared to the world that a large percentage of persons recently insane have been restored to their friends and society who, without such timely assistance, would have passed into the advanced stage of mental unsoundness. A very important point relating to the prevention of mental disorders and the modern nervous diseases is, that the growth of mental function is as gradual as that of bodily power, and that brain-tissue degenerations and mental diseases may be separated by long intervals of time from the too premature and intense stimulation of the brain in school children which causes these nervous diseases. We meet with the preponderance of nervous diseases in the refined and cultivated classes, where, by premature and stimulating processes of education, there has been forced an elaboration of brain-structure, hastening the functional activity of the brain, with no due regard to the law of evolutional precedence. Normal growth and development will give us healthy mind, while a structurally degraded centric nervous system, or an altered quality of blood, and secondary disturbance of nerve-function, will antagonize healthy mental manifestation. If we have want of sleep, a defective generation of nerve-force, an unstable condition of the nerve-centres, an incomplete development of any part concerned in mental action, all of which Dr. Blandford, of England, has ably shown to be causes of mental disease, we cannot expect healthy mental function. Alcohol and opium are to-day responsible for much deterioration of brain. Dipsomania and the opium habit being on the increase among Americans, there is a greatly increased nervousness and an increasing inherited disposition to the different neuroses; and the condition known as cerebral hyperaemia, an increase in the quantity of the blood within the capillaries of the brain, or rather one form of it, of vaso-motor origin, resulting from overwork and mental strain, is greatly on the increase.