Observations on the importance in purchases of land, or mercantile adventures, of ascertaining the rates or laws of mortality among Europeans, by chronic diseases and hot climates : on the data necessary for constructing tables to show the probable duration of a disease : illustrations of the progress of mania, melancholia, craziness, & demonomania, as displayed in Shakespeare's characters of Lear, Hamlet, Ophelia, and Edgar : on the comparative danger of first and subsequent child-births : with an appendix, containing the form of a deed for establishing a joint-stock company, without requiring the aid of Parliament, or the incumbrance of an Act to sue and be sued / by George Farren.

  • Farren, George.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the importance in purchases of land, or mercantile adventures, of ascertaining the rates or laws of mortality among Europeans, by chronic diseases and hot climates : on the data necessary for constructing tables to show the probable duration of a disease : illustrations of the progress of mania, melancholia, craziness, & demonomania, as displayed in Shakespeare's characters of Lear, Hamlet, Ophelia, and Edgar : on the comparative danger of first and subsequent child-births : with an appendix, containing the form of a deed for establishing a joint-stock company, without requiring the aid of Parliament, or the incumbrance of an Act to sue and be sued / by George Farren. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    MADNESS, AND ITS EXCITING CAUSES. It has been truly observed that, in attempting a definition of madness, it is difficult to draw the hne between real disease and habitual wayward- ness. Arnold says, Notional delirium is peculiar to mOidness, and asserts, that the bulk of mankind morally, if not medically, are more or less affected by it. Socrates and the Stoics cpnsidered every foolish or wicked person as insane. All fools,'* says Cicero, are disordered in mind: all fools, therefore, are insane; they who are carried away, either by ungovernable desire or by immoderate anger are out of their own power. Some definitions of madness are so narrow, as to set at liberty half the patients in Bedlam; others so loose, as to give straight-waistcoats to half the world. What Lord Chesterfield said of a lady's reputation may be fairly applied to a fool:— You have not hst your senses, they are only mislaid.^' It may be safely asserted that there is nothing in the form of the head, or brain, to indicate madness. The best observations are strong on this point. Greding, Pinel, and Haslam, all agree. The observations of Bonelus, Morgagni and others, so carefully collected Arnold^ and noticed by Crinhton and Good, establish no principle in cases