An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2024 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

16055 entries, 14138 authors and 1945 subjects. Updated: November 3, 2024

WIGAN, Arthur Ladbroke

1 entries
  • 11646

A new view of insanity: The duality of the mind proved by the structure, functions and diseases of the brain and by the phenomena of mental derangement and shown to be essential to moral responsibility. With an appendix: 1. On the influence of religion on insanity. 2. Conjectures on the nature of the mental operations. 3. On the management of lunatic asylums.

London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844.

"From the seventeenth century there were shifts in some of the basic assumptions about how the brain and mind functioned, and there are some useful markers along the way to an era of more systematic studies. Descartes is the most convenient base. He had earlier firmly separated mind and matter in his philosophy, and is still chiefly known for that. But at the end of his life (1649) he tried to reconcile them by the device of a specific 'seat of the soul' in the brain through which information passed between brain and mind. Symmetry of the operation of the hemispheres was assumed. This theory had currency into the eighteenth century. At the end of that century Franz Gall of Austria and France was assigning discrete faculties to numerous parts of the brain on no strong evidence, and nothing the double form of the brain, without claiming independent action of the hemispheres. Hewett Watson in 1836 discussed duality more directly than had been the case before, and Arthur Wigan in 1844 asserted the duality of the mind roundly and treated the two hemispheres, not consistently, as two independent brains. He was not satisfied with independence, however, and tried various ways of allowing for joint action by the two sides of the brain, as well as for substitution, with one side having the power to act on behalf of both in cases of disease or injury. He also considered that one hemisphere, usually the left, was generally dominant; but he did not see the two hemispheres as differently constituted" (From the Abstract of B. Clarke, "Arthur Wigan and The Duality of the Mind,Psychol Med Monogr Suppl. 1987,11, 1-52.) Digital facsimile the 1844 edition from Google Books at this link.



Subjects: NEUROLOGY, Neurophysiology, PSYCHIATRY