| Description Of Item | Letter to Thomas Laycock from Reverand Joseph Taylor Goodsir, FRSE [Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh], of 11 Danube Street, Edinburgh. Written 27 July 1871. Goodsir recounts his own experience with snuff-taking, from the beginning when he was 25, describing his habits and symptoms (on blood circulation, kidneys, and sleep). After 14 years of the habit, an excess of snuff exacerbated the symptoms until he became anxious and mentally unwell. He stopped taking snuff and has not touched it since, saying that ‘not only did all the symptoms indicative of weakened circulation [leave him], but many others most uncomfortable and injurious conditions disappeared’. Gouddsir then goes on to discuss Laycock’s lectures he attended, briefly expressing his own opinion on the brain and mind regarding the connection to the spiritual and God. He agrees nonetheless on Laycock’s conclusion of the necessity ‘to view and treat all mental diseases just as physico-neural or physico-intellectual derangements’. |