18. Willis (Thomas) Pathologiæ cerebri, et Nervosi Generis Specimen, first edition , lacking portrait and Qq4 & Rr1, light damp-stains to some margins, particularly to last 2 gatherings, later bookplate on inside front cover, contemporary calf, rubbed at corners, rebacked in modern calf, [Madan 2793; Wing W2841], small 4to, Oxford, William Hall for J. Allestry, 1667.
est. £2000 – £3000
“Willis gave one of the most extensive accounts of the whole field of mental illness which had appeared up to that time. He attributed "melancholy" or affective psychosis to "passions of the heart"; and "madness" or psychosis accompanied by thought disorder, delusions or hallucinations - that is schizophrenia - to "vice or fault of the Brain". He recognised the difference between the symptoms of gross brain disease and those of mental illness in which he accounted for the absence of pathological findings by postulating a disturbance of the brain and nerves in terms of disordered "Animal Spirits". For this reason he is often credited with having first equated mind disease with brain disease.” Hunter & Macalpine, Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry, 1535-1860 , 1982.
Unsold