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The Mind and its Tenement; Their Mutual Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Extract

“The knowledge concerning the sympathies and concordances between the mind and the body” saith the founder† of modern science, in discoursing of human philosophy, or the knowledge of ourselves, as he terms it, is “fit to be emancipate and made a knowledge by itself. The consideration is double: either how and how far the humours and effects of the body do alter or work upon the mind; or again, how and how far the passions and apprehensions of the mind do alter or work upon the body. The former of these,” (the influence of the body on the mental state,) continues Bacon, “hath been enquired and considered as a part and appendix of medicine, but much more as a part of religion or superstition. For the physician prescribeth cures of the mind in phrensies and melancholy passions; and pretendeth also to exhibit medicines to exhilarate the mind, to confirm the courage, to clarify the wits, to corroborate the memory and the like: but the scruples and superstitions of diet and other regimen of the body in the sect of Pythagoreans, in the heresy of the Manicheans, and in the law of Mahomet do exceed. … The root and life of all which prescripts is besides the ceremony, the consideration of that dependency, which the affections of the mind are submitted unto, upon the state and disposition of the body.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1856 

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