Medical testimony and evidence in cases of lunacy; being the Croonian lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians in 1853. With an essay on the conditions of mental soundness.

  • Mayo, Thomas, 1790-1871.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical testimony and evidence in cases of lunacy; being the Croonian lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians in 1853. With an essay on the conditions of mental soundness. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    It is due to the greatest moral sect in the heathen world to admit, that an element of mental soundness, which I shall now adduce, intimately connected, indeed, with the manage- ment of our regrets in the pursuits and struggles of life, has received the broadest light from their philosophy. The sect to which I allude, the Stoics, characterized it in language, which I shall borrow from Epictetus. ‘ If it were pos- sible,’ he thus supposes his Deity to address him, ‘ I would have made this body of thine, 0 Epictetus, free, and not liable to hindrance. But since I could not give thee this, I have given thee a certain portion of myself, the faculty of exerting the powers of pursuit and avoidance of desire and aversion. Taking care of this, and making what is thy own to consist in this, thou wilt never be restrained, never be hindered.’ This hypothesis suggests, that our happiness, to be secure, must depend, in respect to external circumstances, upon pursuits and endeavours, which are at our own disposal, and not upon results; a proposition which the phi- losopher carefully illustrates through his whole