Curiosities of Medical ExperienceMillingen, J. G. (John Gideon)
Philosophy
Curiosities of Medical Experience
Millingen, J. G. (John Gideon)
Medicine
The ancients have variously endeavoured to determine the seat of this
faculty. Aristotle placed it in the heart, which, from the sense of its
oppression observed in acute moral sufferings he considered the origin of
our nerves, or sensorium. Avicenus and other philosophers located
imagination in the anterior portion of the brain, which he called the
_prow_; memory in the posterior part, which he denominated the _poop_, and
judgment in the centre of the organ, or what mariners would term
_mid-ship_. The notions of Gall and Spurzheim had long since been
anticipated by philosophers and physicians, both in regard to the division
of the cerebral organ, and the external appearance of the cranium, which
denoted their preponderancy. That temperature exercises a powerful
influence over our mental faculties is evident. In warm climates we find a
greater exaltation of the mind, more enthusiasm and vivid emotion, than in
northern latitudes. The East is the land of fancy, illustrated by their
wondrous tales of fiction, and their vivid and fantastic imagery,
displayed in the chimeras and the arabesques of their palaces and temples.
In these regions all the passions are uncontrollable and wild. Love is
characterized by furious or dark jealousy, according to the rank and
power of the lover; and ambition is signalized by bloodthirsty and
promiscuous barbarity. No opposition can be brooked: man is either a
ferocious tyrant, or an abject slave; subjection alone preventing the
oppressed from being as sanguinary as the oppressor. Government is
despotism, and religion fatality and fanaticism. In northern climes, on
the contrary, every thing is cold and calculating. The almighty passion of
love may prevail; but its demonstrations are morose, concentrated,
although not less ferocious than under a southern sky. In the one country,
man seeks the dark shelter of the forest, and the solitude of the
mountain, to ponder over his grievances, or soliloquise on his sufferings;
in the other he courts the roseate bower and the orange grove, to lull him
into a soft repose which may calm his feelings by temporary oblivion, to
be roused again to action by the stimulus of opium, tobacco, and a burning
sun. The ancients were so fully convinced of this influence of the
amorphous constitution, that Lucianus tells us that the Abderites (a
people so remarkable for their stupidity and sluggishness that _Abderitica
mens_ was proverbial), having witnessed the performance of one of
Euripides's plays under the fierce solar rays, became fired with such
enthusiasm, that they ran about the streets in a wild phrensy, repeating
aloud his sublime verses, until the coolness of the evening restored them
to reason and to their native torpor. So predominant are these feelings,
which owe their character to climate, that they regulate our ideas of a
future state, as well as our conduct on earth. The paradise of the
Mohammedan is a blessed region of everlasting pleasure and sensual
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