Daniel Hack Tuke Walking a Tight-rope

Abstract

Notes that in Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind Upon the Body in Health and Disease (1872), the eminent British neurologist and psychiatrist Daniel Hack Tuke collects a large number of puzzling cases that defy medical understanding. Cites Tuke’s frustration at being unable to develop a cogent explanation of the phenomena he confronts, reverting to the then current physicalist terminology. Although Tuke intuits the role of the imagination in both causing and curing disease, he fails to comprehend the concept of the unconscious that Freud was to articulate a quarter of a century later. Nevertheless, his work is an important landmark in the investigation of the mind/body relationship, notably for its emphasis on the place of irrational elements as a source of illness and well being.