Daniel Hack Tuke Walking a Tight-Rope‪.‬

Abstract In his 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. Although he observes and intuits the role of the imagination in both causing and curing disease, he is unable to come up with a cogent explanation of the phenomena he confronts and therefore often reverts to the then current physicalist terminology of nerves, spasms, paroxysms, etc. Missing from his understanding is the concept of the unconscious that Freud was to put forward a quarter of a century later. Yet Tuke's 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.