This torpor is the consequence of an oppressed condition of
brain, proceeding, for the most part, from increased arterial action in
this organ. Thus the effect is taken for the cause, and a treatment
directed in conformity with this mistaken notion. Happily, the practice
usually pursued on those occasions, and which is directed to the state
of the stomach and intestinal canal, is, as far as it goes, beneficial
to the primary disease; for occasional _purging_, whether with the
_blue pill_ or _Plummer's pill_, and the use of a simple and
abstemious mode of living, are as well calculated to relieve affections
of the brain, as those of the stomach. But the fault of such a mistaken
view of the subject is, that the treatment is confined too exclusively
to one organ, and that the one not primarily affected; to the neglect of
other means that may be as much or more required for the relief of the
head. Where, for example, the patient complains of throbbing headach,
with other marks of increased arterial action in and about the brain,
it is dangerous to rely solely upon _cathartics_, and to neglect
_bleeding_, a neglect, which, I have more than once seen reason to
believe, has been the occasion of fatal apoplexy ensuing.
The precise difference in the condition of the brain, in the three forms
of _insanity_ now mentioned, is not at all known. Dissection hitherto
has not thrown any light upon the subject; nor is it probable that it
will do so hereafter.
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