![]() The standardisation of melancholia in the second half of the nineteenth century occurred in a number of ways. Moreover, the internal biological model used to explain the disease, and the group of symptoms used to define and diagnose it, displayed remarkable coherence for its time. Towards the end of the century, however, melancholia was one of the most frequently diagnosed conditions in British asylums, and the disorder was awarded considerable attention in diagnostic literature. At this time, the nosological status of melancholia in British literature was uncertain, as several medical writers sought to replace it with, or subsume it under, other categories such as monomania. Within this context, melancholia was reconstituted as a disorder of emotion, a pathological state that arose when the brain was subjected to repeated irritation, over time affecting the tone of the cerebral tissue, resulting in pathological reflexive action. Central to this framework was the concept of psychological reflex action, which allowed physicians to explain emotion as an involuntary act that was both physiological and psychological. ![]() ![]() ![]() In the first half of the century, physicians began to draw on experimental physiology to explain mental phenomena, creating a language and conceptual framework with which to describe emotional functionality. This book has sought to map the reconceptualisation of melancholia as a modern biomedical mood disorder in nineteenth-century psychological medicine. ![]()
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