Written by: Raphael Shmuelson, BSc

When discussing the injuries which can befall a nervous system, it can be helpful to traverse the subject by means of categories. The brain specialist can conceive of things as local or non-local.Generalized injuries can be subtle and affect multiple body systems. This would include things like infections of the nervous system, take meningitis as an example. The signs are generalized, and include a full body rash, generalized sensitivity to light, generalied headache, neck pain, and altered consciousness. This can be contrasted with a more specific type of problem, take a stroke for example. Depending on where the flow of blood is blocked by a circulating clot, or embolus, it can result in a presentation depending ultimately on where the blockage took place. A blockage of the middle cerebral artery, for example, results in the presentation typically attributed to stroke patients with a loss of function of the motor function and sensation in the side opposite to where the blockage takes place.

In the case of the image above, the darker territory represents an area affected by the occlusion or blockage of the middle cerebral artery. The segment of the brain is a transverse section, and the red arrow is pointing towards a shift of the midline which often results from an increase in intracerebral pressure.

Although understood in terms of behavior rather than physical examinations, mental illnesses have some overlap with physical problems of the brain and represent a very interesting subject of study. Called neuropsychiatry, it seeks to determine the relationship between the structure and the function, much in a manner by which biochemists seek to elucidate the behavior of enzymes. Dementia occupies a great number of cases which these specialists see, which has, in the orthodx cannon, described as a general decrease in brain function resulting from an accumulation of proteins neurofibrillary tangles interfering with its function. One of the more tragic aspects of this field of inquiry, is the lack of therapeutics although great advances are taking place with conditions including epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and strokes.

In John Lamb Lash's book Not in his image he roots the nature of human mysticism, perhaps even religious experience in a sort of deep ecology. He has alluded to the idea, in one of his lectures, that the presence of autism or autistic spectrum type manifestations are sort of a response of the earth, as a therapeutic response to the widespread degradation of the environment.

Unlike many disorders, which have a range of understood causes, the presence of an autism-spectrum phenotype has several suspected contributing factors but not a definite cause. Peat has explored this question in one of his earlier newsletters(2018). The presence of a toxic intrauterine environment, ultimately reflective of an overall polluted enclosing environment, might represent one of many physiological causes. Psychosocial cuases are much more controversial, putting poor parenting characterized by an overbearing, chaotic or generally unsupportive environment. It has been increasing in the populationwhich may reflect an unaddressed cause or lack of effective therapeutics.

Another perspective, such as would be expressed by someone like Tomas Szasz might accuse the medical profession of engaging in the profit of categorization. On some level, he touches on a principle espoused by Henry Hazlitt, that authorities engage in the breaking of windows in order to employ the window repairman. But it is undoubtable that people with 'mental illness' do indeed suffer, the real question is the extent to which it is caused by the physically and psychically degraded civilization. Perhaps these diseases of civilization find a common root in the struggle for meaning, purpose and fulfillment.

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