" It is
"the withdrawal of the stimulus necessary for its healthy exercise
which renders solitary confinement so severe a punishment, even to the
most daring minds. It is a lower degree of the same cause which renders
continuous seclusion from society so injurious to both mental and
bodily health."
"Inactivity of intellect and of feeling is a very frequent predisposing
cause of every form of nervous disease. For demonstrative evidence of
this position, we have only to look at the numerous victims to be found
among persons who have no call to exertion in gaining the means of
subsistence, and no objects of interest on which to exercise their
mental faculties, and who consequently sink into a state of mental
sloth and nervous weakness." "If we look abroad upon society, we shall
find innumerable examples of mental and nervous debility from this
cause. When a person of some mental capacity is confined for a long
time to an unvarying round of employment which affords neither scope
nor stimulus for one half of the faculties, and, from want of education
or society, has no external resources; the mental powers, for want of
exercise, become blunted, and the perceptions slow and dull.
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