The mind is a most complex affair, it is always active, nor is one faculty at work and the rest idle, but many parts are at work at the same time, and act and react upon each other. We may exercise our perceptive faculty, or reason, memory, and will, and be affected by our feelings at the same time. There is with it all a regulating power that coördinates or brings these different actions into harmony, and we get the working of a healthy mind.
CHAPTER III.
INSANITY; OR, DISEASE OF THE MIND.
In common language we speak of the mind diseased.
This is not strictly true, as it is the brain that is diseased and, in consequence, we get disturbed mental action.
Every person has individual characteristics. As no two faces are alike, so the mind, character, and manner of no two are alike, and it is by the manifestation of these, that each is known.
When a person becomes insane there is always a change from his natural way of thinking, feeling, and acting, due to disease of the brain. Sometimes the change is slight, or concealed by the patient, and is apparent only to near friends, or after a careful examination. Sometimes it is so great as to attract immediate attention, when it may present the features of raving madness, or of the most abject melancholy.
To illustrate this change, we may suppose both a king and a pauper to become insane: there is, of course, a vast difference between them, but the king may be so changed by the disease as to believe that he is a pauper, and himself and his family starving, and he may also wish and even try to work and dig like a laborer to support them; or a pauper may think himself a king, and try to act like one. Such conditions show a marked change in the manner of thinking, feeling, and acting, which involves diseased action of the intellect, the emotions, and the will.