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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    well-known chorus of the e Medea’ of Euripides, where the poet claims the influence of poetry and music as more favourable and more wanted in sorrow than on festive occasions. And this effect is illustrated by him also, to whom the human heart was perhaps better known than to any human writer before him or since— ‘ Grief filis the room up of my absent child ; Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words; Remembers me of all his gracious parts; Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form: Then have I reason to he fond of grief • Thus far the imagination is playing its bene- ficial part in reference to a recent source of grief. We go along with such a sufferer, and afford that sympathy which is the best balm to a wounded spirit; but which, it must be observed, is contravened by either excess or undue repe- tition in the expressions of grief; and which, as Adam Smith beautifully argues, is denied to those who grieve over much. It appears to me, that this last rule is violated by the able and well-intentioned poem,e In Memoriam,’ of Alfred