312 Abnormal Psychology
seek to relieve the patient’s mind of worries, fears, and suspi-
cions, “for the body cannot be cured till the mind be satis-
fied... but if satisfaction may not be had...then... drive
out one passion with another, or by some contrary passion”
(Burton, 1651/1927, p. 476).
Mystical Bedlamby Michael MacDonald (1981) is an-
other source for information about concepts of abnormal
psychology in seventeenth century England. MacDonald
researched case histories recorded by Napier, a seventeenth-
century astrological physician, of some 2,000 “obscure
rustics” that Napier had treated. Napier’s diagnoses classified
mental disorders as types of sickness variously explained by
traditional cosmological and religious beliefs, and as results
of individual experiences and social actions.
Increasing city populations and sizes likewise increased
the importance attached to the physical consequences of
living in crowded urban environments and assumptions that
the humors are affected by toxins and miasmas. George
Cheyne’s The English Malady,published in 1734, refers to
depression or melancholy, then regarded as a peculiarly
British ailment not only by the English but also by the French.
Cheyne attributed the alleged prevalence of melancholy
among the English to the conditions of urban life with special
reference to London: “... the infinite number of fires,...the
clouds of stinking breaths and perspirations,...thestinking
butcherhouses, stables, dunghills...andmixture of such
variety of all kinds of atoms are more than sufficient to
putrefy...which in time, must alter, weaken, destroy the
healthiest constitutions of men....”(quoted in Harms, 1967,
pp. 59–60). The recommendation that asylums be built in the
country comes as no surprise.
From Animal Spirits to Animal Electricity
In the sixteenth century Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) re-
ported that nerves appear solid and therefore could not serve
as conduits for pneuma. In the seventeenth century, William
Harvey (1578–1657) discovered the circulation of the blood.
He demonstrated that the heart is a pump that propels blood
through the body by mechanical action. This ended the need
for the theory that vital spirits provide the impetus for the
pulsing of the blood. However, the concept of animal spirits
was not abandoned based on these discoveries, but continued
in use to explain psychological function and mental illness
beyond the seventeenth century. The neurology of the French
philosopher, René Descartes (1596–1650), depended on the
notion of animal spirits being shunted along tubular nerves
from the sense organs to the brain. In 1660, Highmore (cited
in Lopez-Piñero, 1983) described animal spirits as minutest
fiery particles, rarefied in the heart by fermentation and,
mixed with blood, transmitted through the arteries to the
brain where they are separated from the blood and stored in
the channels and ventricles of the brain for use under the di-
rection of the soul. Thomas Willis (1684) published a fairly
accurate description of nerves and his theories about convul-
sive diseases. He conjectured that animal spirits formed in
the brain produce motions by explosive action. When this ex-
plosive action is excessive, convulsions and mental disease
result.
After Isaac Newton (1642–1726) published hisPhilosophiae
Naturalis Principia Mathematicain 1687, the concept of ani-
mal spirits was redefined as a vital gravitational force (elan
vita).The Italian anatomist Luigi Galvani (1737–1798) reported
that electrical energy is propagated along the nerves and gener-
ates muscular movement, a discovery that finally led to the
abandonment of the belief that animal spirits move through
tubular nerves. However, the doctrine of animal spirits was not
wholly replaced as a physiological explanation for sensation
and action and the notion of “animal electricity” (vis nervosa)
replaced that of animal spirits. Clarke and Jacyna (1987) com-
ment as follows:It is a remarkable fact that a concept of how a nerve functioned
should have survived almost intact from Greco-Roman antiquity
to the nineteenth century, but this was the case with the doctrine
of the hollow nerve.... The basic supposition was that messages
could travel along the lumen of the hollow nerve, and although
subjected to various modifications, the theory was still alive in
the early 1800s. Because it was universally accepted for so many
centuries, owing chiefly to the authority of Galen, we can con-
clude that it must have satisfied the majority of scientists and
physicians. (p. 160)The theory was finally overthrown by research on animal
electricity first reported by Galvani in 1791.
The declining influence of the humoral theory was accom-
panied by an increasing interest in so-called nervous disease.
This rather loosely defined concept distinguished between
insanity and less disabling disturbances found with some fre-
quency in the general population.
In Britain, nervous diseases were assumed to be more
common in the leisured classes as a result of insufficient fresh
air, lack of exercise, adultery, abuse of medicine, excessive
study, and others previously listed by Burton (1651/1927) as
causes of melancholy. Robert Whytt (1765) complained,... the disorders which are the subject of the following observa-
tions have been treated by authors under the names of flatulent,
hypochondriac, or hysteric. Physicians have bestowed the char-
acter of nervous on all those disorders whose nature and cause
they were ignorant of. (p. III)