Sanity and Insanity

ISBN: 9781331919360 出版年：2016 页码：427 Charles Mercier Forgotten Books

There is, however, one department of medical knowledge to which even the most intelligent of laymen has not yet gained access, and that is the department that deals with insanity. With respect to this malady the great majority of medical men are themselves in the position of laymen. They have not studied it. It was not included in their examinations; it was a thing outside their curriculum — a thing apart, having little community of nature or similarity of character with the subjects Of their professional studies. TO the outside layman — to the non-medical public, insanity presents itself in two somewhat contradictory aspects. Sometimes it is to them a matter of transparent and childlike simplicity, a thing which a person of most ordinary intelligence — say a common juryman — is capable Of Estimating with accuracy and certainty. At other times it is viewed much as our ancestors Viewed the Black Art as something mysterious and marvellous something super natural something to be spoken Of with bated breath; something too full of awe to be even named explicitly. It must then be referred to in indirect and elliptical terms, with pursing Of the lips, with raised eyebrows and shoulders, and with shakings Of the head.