bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On the Terms Delusion, Illusion, and Hallucination
Authors: Blount J. H.
Published: August 2008

In a former number I was led to draw attention to the distinctive meaning of illusions, hallucinations, and delusions, in consequence of the confusion manifested in the medical evidence given at a late celebrated trial, and from observing a like confusion in most of our works on mental medicine. And without entering into the physiological or psychological nature of these phenomena, I endeavoured to point out the plain, simple, and efficient characteristic, that illusions and hallucinations were the morbid phenomena of perception, the former occurring with, the latter without any external or objective cause; and that delusion was the result of morbid conception. In the following remarks, I wish to point out the distinctive features of those faculties whose morbid phenomena are designated by the above three terms, particularly the distinction between sensation and perception; for the confusion existing relative to the phenomena, healthy or morbid of any faculty does and must result from that faculty in its nature and limits being badly and confusedly apprehended, and therefore requiring a further analysis and more decided definition; a confusion which, relative to our subject, has led some in the present day to locate the faculty of perception, independent of sensation, in the nerves and organs of special sense; (see the Annales Psychulogiques.)
The Physical Conditions of Consciousness
Authors: Herzen A. , McDowall T. W.
Published: August 2008

I have read with much interest Prof. Cleland's article “On the Seat of Consciousness.” I agree with many of the author's opinions, especially with those contained in the critical or negative part of his work; but it appears to me that the positive portion, notably the extension of consciousness to the peripheral terminations of the nerves, is scarcely in agreement with the facts supplied by clinical observation and physiological experiment.
On Pathological Research in Asylums for the Insane
Authors: Adam James
Published: August 2008

According to the latest returns, published by the Commissioners in Lunacy in their Blue Book for 1883, sixty-seven thousand four hundred and eighteen patients were registered as under treatment in the various asylums of England and Wales, and as being under private care during the previous year.
Clinical Observations on the Blood of the Insane
Authors: Macphail S. Rutherford
Published: August 2008

The older writers on Insanity including Pinel, and Esquirol, believed that functional disturbances of the higher nervous centres were the chief factors in producing mental disease. Whether this is the case or not, and whether functional disease of the brain may exist without appreciable change of structure, there can be no question that the quantity and quality of the blood circulating through the higher nervous centres affect their functions in an important manner.
1. German Retrospect
Authors: Ireland William W.
Published: August 2008

Dr. Gierke, of Breslau, has, in two articles in the “Neurologisches Centralblatt” (Numbers 16 and 17, 1883), given the results of special researches on the neuroglia. He accuses Deiters, Boll, Golgi, and Jastrowitz of making incorrect descriptions, and of mistaking the results of their own reagents and dyes for natural structures. Gierki promises to publish his researches at greater length with illustrations, which are highly necessary in the description of delicate tissues. In the meantime he gives a number of details which could only be fairly reproduced by translating his papers. The neuroglia is the supporting tissue or frame-work of the nervous centres. It forms one-third of the substance of the grey matter, and its cells throw out branching processes which, taking the shape of flattened fibres, form sheaths for the nerve tubes. These never lie against one another, as Boll imagined. The cells of the neuroglia in the spinal cord of the sheep have a diameter of from 0·005 to 0·008 mm., and their processes are sometimes as long as from 0·4 to 0·2 mm. The neuroglia is everywhere, save at a part of the medulla oblongata, where the nerve tubes of the stratum zonale Arnoldi crowd upon one another, and lie directly under the pia mater. In other places, as in the substantia gelatinosa Rolandi, the neuroglia prevails, and there are few nerve elements. In contradiction to those who hold that the perivascular spaces may be owing to retraction of the dead tissues or contraction of vessels, Dr. Gierke maintains that there is not the slightest doubt that the perivascular spaces exist in the living brain. They are of varying calibre, and their strongly developed cellular ramifications are analogous to the sinuses in the lymphatic gland. In some places, as in the central canal of the spinal cord, he has found the large vessels surrounded by perivascular canals, which he has traced into real lymphatics.
On Epileptic Violence
Authors: Echeverria M. G.
Published: August 2008

The important clinical researches on Epilepsy during the last decade have contributed to afford a sound criterium for a correct discernment of the curious physical phenomena connected with this dreadful neurosis, in cases where it becomes of great moment, for a legal decision, to establish the positive grounds for a just estimate of the sanity or insanity of a culpable act committed by an epileptic. To the important bearing of the matter to be here briefly discussed, we have been fully alive for many years past, laying upon it particular stress, in the light in which we present it, as our contributions on the subject testify.
On the Necessity of all Medical Students attending a Course of Lectures and receiving Clinical Instruction also in Psychological Medicine
Authors: Moore Edward B.
Published: August 2008

Few, I think, will attempt to deny that it is desirable that all medical students should attend a course of lectures on the important subject of Mental Disease. And further, that these lectures should be compulsory, no matter what the university or medical school may be at which the students matriculate, or where they may intend to take their degrees or diplomas. Some there are who may object to these lectures being compulsory, for the reason that this course of lectures would be the addition of another subject to the already lengthened curriculum of medical studies. I think we are all agreed that the medical student of the present day has enough, and more than enough, of subjects to occupy the short term of four years that is usually allotted to his studies.
A Glance at Lunacy in Spain
Authors: Jelly F. A.
Published: August 2008

While on a short visit to Madrid some little time ago I determined to find out how Spain treated her lunatics. I visited the public asylum of Santa Isabel at Leganes, but was refused admission, as there was no resident physician, and the village doctor, who was supposed to make his rounds at 9 a.m., was away ! A friend, however, kindly gave me an introduction to the leading Spanish alienist, Dr. D. José Esquerdo, who, he told me, had a private asylum at Carabanchel, and thither I went. This little village is about three miles from Madrid, and easily reached by tramcar. Dr. Esquerdo's asylum stands on an elevated, sandy plain, about 200 métres from C. Alto, and is approached by a steep, rugged road. In external appearance it is most unlike our ideas of a private asylum: not a tree to be seen for miles, and the whole block of buildings is enclosed by wooden palisades.
An Unusually Heavy Brain in a General Paralytic
Authors: McDowall T. W.
Published: August 2008

The entire interest in this case lies in the brain weight, but it may be well to record the few known facts about his previous history, and to give a general outline of his condition whilst in the asylum.
Notes of four Abdominal Cases of interest
Authors: Campbell J. A.
Published: August 2008

In private practice abdominal diseases are among the most obscure and difficult of accurate diagnosis that come under observation. In asylum practice they certainly are about the most difficult that we have to deal with, owing to the want of any reliable information from patients as to symptoms, feelings, origin, or progress of the case, and frequently obscure abdominal diseases are concomitant with, or very probably give origin to, marked delusions which further tend to complicate the case.
Lead-Poisoning, with Mental and Nervous Disorders
Authors: Robertson Alex.
Published: August 2008

In the Journal for July, 1880, several groups of cases were recorded by Dr. Savage and others, including myself, on insanity and other disorders of the nervous system, resulting from the poisonous action of lead. The following note may be regarded as supplementary to my contribution to that series of articles.
3. German Retrospect
Authors: Ireland William W. , I W. W.
Published: August 2008

Dr. A. Kast (“Aerztl. Intelligenzblatt,” No. 44, 1885, quoted in the “Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde,” No. 2, 1886) has given a curious case of loss of the power of speech, and injury to the musical faculty.
How Can the Medical Spirit be best kept up in Asylums for the Insane?
Authors: Strahan S. A. K.
Published: August 2008

The supposition is that an asylum for the insane is a place where those who are mentally ill are received and treated according to the latest improved tenets of scientific medicine, and are so helped by all known means towards mental health—a place where disorders of the mind and diseases of the nervous system are specially studied and treated by men who have given up their whole time and energy to this one special branch of our profession, and where every opportunity is seized
Alternation of Neuroses
Authors: Savage Geo. H.
Published: August 2008

I have chosen this title as inferring as little as possible any relation other than that of time between the states of disorder. Night follows day, but is not caused by it, and, as we shall see, in some cases one form of nervous disorder is followed by another form of disorder, both having probably a similar cause, but not the one depending on the other as its cause. It is only necessary to say that I use the term neurosis in a very general way, thereby meaning any well recognized disturbance of the nervous system which might be considered due to direct inheritance, or might itself start a morbid nervous series.
What are the Tests of Fitness for Discharge from Asylums?
Authors: Newington H. Hayes
Published: August 2008

It is not proposed that the time of this meeting should be taken up by a monologue of mine in the shape of a set paper. I intend only to mark out the ground which can be profitably covered, and after dealing myself with one or two of the questions raised, I shall leave the remainder to other members present. After that it is hoped that there will follow a general discussion commensurate with the importance of the subject.
Suggestions on the Construction and Organization of Hospitals for the Insane
Authors: Brown Sanger
Published: August 2008

It is not my purpose to discuss in detail hospital organization and construction, but simply to call attention to some defects in both, which, I think, ought to be carefully pondered by those who have an interest in the care and treatment of the insane. My observations are intended to apply, for the most part, to those hospitals mainly devoted to the treatment of recent cases of insanity, and where no considerable number of incurable cases is allowed to accumulate. But with some slight modifications they apply with equal force to all hospitals and asylums for the insane.
Cases of Masturbation (Masturbatic Insanity)
Authors: Spitzka E. C.
Published: August 2008

There are exceptions to the rule that all male masturbators are shy with regard to the female sex, and at all times. It is true that the majority are so in the earlier periods of their vice, and as long as definitive mental disease has not set in. In some cases where such disease has become established, a sudden transformation from bashfulness to brazen effrontery, and from timidity to bold, insulting and lascivious demeanour, is noticed. These patients exaggerate the characteristic, so happily drawn by Oliver Goldsmith in “She Stoops to Conquer,” of a certain class of men who are heroes before barmaids and cowards before refined females. In exceptional instances, the masturbatic lunatic is as brutally indecent to those of a higher as to those of a lower station. Godding relates a case of this kind in graphic language in his “Two Hard Cases.”
A Case of Imbecility with Choreoid Movements
Authors: Beach Fletcher , Asylum Darenth
Published: August 2008

F. P., aged 17, was admitted May 17th, 1875, with the following history:—Parents healthy, temperate, not connected by consanguinity. His maternal grandfather and a cousin on the mother's side are paralyzed. He is the eldest of six children, of whom two are dead, one succumbing from scarlet fever, the other soon after birth. The rest are healthy. His mental condition is said to have been good up to the age of ten years, when, during a fight with a boy, he was struck with a key in the face. Disease of the jaw followed, and on recovery he was noticed not to be so bright, having been a good scholar before. Twelve months afterwards he was knocked down and became insensible, and some months after he fell and struck the back of his head. He has been getting gradually duller. Four years ago he had an epileptic fit, affecting both sides of the body. He was taken to the Hospital for Epilepsy and Paralysis, and, while there, had two fits. He became excitable and tried to stab a patient, and his removal became necessary. After he was taken out of the hospital he became quiet for a time, but the excitability reappeared. He was taken to the Hampstead Asylum, and subsequently removed to the one at Clapton.
A Case of Prolonged Sleep
Authors: Keser J.
Published: August 2008

Cases of prolonged sleep and hystero-epilepsy being of comparatively rare occurrence in England, it may be worth while to record one which came under my care in March last.
Outdoor Work as a Remedial Agent in Insanity
Authors: Francis Lloyd
Published: August 2008

I propose to consider this subject exclusively in its relation to the insane of the better class. The pauper asylums throughout the country have long been admirably organized in this particular. Every such institution has attached to it a farm, gardens, a multiplicity of workshops, and the appliances for the pursuit of various trades—frequently those special to the locality, as weaving sheds in the West Biding Asylums. In one or another department, all the labourers and artisans, who comprise the majority of the inmates, can find congenial occupation. Manual labour, thus systematically provided for those able and willing to engage in it, is coincidently the source of immense benefit to the mental and physical health of the patients, and of considerable profit to the institution; the pauper lunatic, by one and the same effort, works out his own salvation and helps to pay for his care and treatment; the recovery rate is raised, the rate per head diminished. There is obviously danger of regarding the financial and not the remedial as the paramount consideration; but no instance of such an abuse of therapeutics has ever been brought forward. To the county patient hand-work is neither a novelty nor a hardship: even though his mental obliquity or confusion be such that he fails utterly to comprehend or appreciate the motives of those who urge him to employ himself; yet he is glad to exchange the monotony of ward, airing court, or aimless country walk, for the bustle and activity of farm or shop, with the prospect, may be, of working at his own craft or even acquiring a fresh one.
ætiology, Pathology, and Treatment of Puerperal Insanity
Authors: Clark A. Campbell
Published: August 2008

The value of an examination of the urinary constituents in the present investigation depends on (1) the promptness with which it is made, and whenever possible it should date from the first warning of mental attack; (2) on qualitative and quantitative analysis; (3) on microscopic examination; (4) on fluid and solid measures.
Our Laws and Our Staff
Authors: Woods Oscar
Published: August 2008

As the British Medical Association does not often visit Ireland, I think the present not an unsuitable time to lay before this Section a few facts which I think of special bearing on the management of Trish asylums, and largely affecting the interests of their inmates. My object, however, is as much to elicit the opinions of others as to impart information. When the Psychological Association met in Dublin in 1875 an interesting paper was read by Dr. Stewart on the “Obstacles to the Advancement in Ireland of Psychological Medicine,” and laid principal stress on the fact that 18 out of 22 Irish asylums had no assistant medical officer. Suffice it now to say that they have since been appointed to five other asylums, but that there are still 13 asylums without a second medical officer.
The Sexual and Reproductive Functions, Normal and Perverted, in Relation to Insanity. I. Menstruation: its Commencement, Irregularities, and Cessation. II. the Sexual Instinct and its Abuse. III. Pregnancy, Parturition, etc
Authors: Clark Campbell
Published: August 2008

In undertaking to introduce a discussion on this very large and important question, I am conscious of my inability to do it justice. No one can possibly cover the wide range of subjects comprised in it; and I am anxious rather to elicit the convictions of more experienced men than to obtrude my own crude and imperfect ideas. My purpose is, therefore, to state the case as briefly as possible, and to introduce questions for discussion in preference to merely ventilating my own ideas. In this way we may arrive at some common points of agreement and materially advance our knowledge of the subject. There can be no two opinions as to the advantage of bringing to a focus the collective experience and conclusions of the various sections of our profession interested in this field of research, and the present opportunity is a particularly good one. The title of the discussion embraces a great deal, and yet does not strictly include topics which might be considered relevant, particularly therapeutics. My aim at the outset will be to invite your special attention to a few questions only, and in order to make the most of our time and concentrate the discussion as much as possible I propose to take each division separately. The subject, viewed as a whole, is so far-reaching and practical as to possess uncommon interest, for it links together medicine and psychological medicine, it gives an open field of discussion to general medicine, obstetrics, and psychology, and it views insanity on its less speculative side, because the more materialistic functions are brought out in strong relief, and sometimes even overshadow the characters of mental disease.
The Cairo Lunatic Asylum, 1888
Authors: Sandwith F. M.
Published: August 2008

Makrizy, an Arabic historian, who wrote in the year 1421, tells us of the first hospital and lunatic wards with which Egypt was endowed. It appears that in 1278, a.d., a mamaluke called Kalaoon was attacked by a violent colic at Damascus, and, being cured by medicines from the hospital there, he vowed in gratitude that he would build a similar hospital should he ever come to the throne of Egypt. The following year he commenced a reign of eleven years, during which he seized Tripoli, recaptured Damascus, and governed his subjects at home by alternate acts of cruelty and beneficence. In one of his fits of anger he is said to have delivered up Cairo to sword and plunder for three days. He bartered one of his buildings for an old palace, turned the latter into a hospital, and built close by a school, and a mosque for his own burial place. His architect worked with such energy that the whole was completed in less than twelve months; but his excessive zeal made him unpopular with the ecclesiastics of the day. This is not to be wondered at, for he compelled all the artisans to work exclusively for him; he looted the citadel of Roda of granite and marble columns, and he used to stand on the scaffolds himself, and, by the aid of mamalukes in the streets, compelled passers by of every rank to carry stones for the building, so that no one would come that way if he could help it! Kalaoon endowed the hospital with money for wards and out-patients, and desired that all should make use of it—rich and poor, great and small, bond and free. His arrangements included doctors with fixed salaries, male and female nurses, beds and bedclothes, special wards for fevers, ophthalmia, wounds, diarrhoea, obstetrics, and phthisis, kitchen, wine, dispensary and medicines, and even a medical lecture-room. Fifty readers of the Koran were provided for the mosque-tomb, to lecture to thirty students of theology belonging to all the four sects, also a library with six eunuch attendants, and a school for orphan children.
Notes of Ten Years' Experience in the use of the Turkish Bath in the Treatment of Mental Ill-health
Authors: Baker Robert
Published: August 2008

Nearly fifteen years ago Dr. Kitching, on his retirement from the duties of Superintendent of the York Retreat, after twenty-five years of devoted service, wrote for the guidance of the Committee and myself a paper containing many excellent suggestions for the improvement of the Institution he loved so well.
The Study of the Criminal
Authors: Ellis Havelock
Published: August 2008

When Homer described Thersites as ugly and deformed, with harsh or scanty hair, and a pointed head, like a pot that had collapsed to a peak in the baking—
An Abstract of 1,565 Post-Mortem Examinations of the Brain Performed at the Wakefield Asylum during a Period of Eleven Years. (Paper laid before the Psychological Section of the British Medical Association, August, 1889.)
Authors: Bullen F. St. John
Published: August 2008

The Abstract which has been made embraces fifteen hundred and sixty-five cases, and extends over a period of eleven years. Most of the autopsies, that is, the cerebrospinal portion of them, were performed by Sir J. Crichton-Browne, Drs. Herbert Major and Bevan Lewis. Such statements therefore as are made may be accepted as faithful representations of the existent conditions so far as means allowed. It must be premised that, although the reports show evidence throughout of careful and conscientious work, and mostly are very full and embracing, yet there is some indefiniteness conferred by the absence of an exact and systematic method in their compilation. Nevertheless, it must not be supposed that such was always omitted; but that often where special lines of investigation have been pursued the results have not been incorporated in the records.
Melancholia, from the Physiological and Evolutionary Points of View
Authors: Robertson George M.
Published: August 2008

Probably no form of insanity includes so many varieties, or is characterized by so peculiar and even contradictory symptoms as melancholia. Under this form of mental derangement most authors include a variety they term excited or active melancholia which is characterized by a motor excitement, sometimes equalling that of acute mania, and they also include another variety termed melancholia with stupor, in which the patient remains absolutely motionless and quiet. Two more strikingly different varieties of insanity it would be impossible to describe, and we are at once confronted by the question — What explanation is there of the existence of these symptoms in melancholia?
On the Psychical Disorders of Peripheral Neuritis
Authors: Ross James
Published: August 2008

Gentlemen,—I feel it a great honour to be asked to address your learned Society, and yet it is not without misgiving that I have undertaken the task. I am, indeed, somewhat abashed at the temerity which has led me to discuss Medico-Psychological problems before such masters of the subject as I see before me, but I am in some measure reconciled to the position in which I find myself by the consideration that the kindness which induced my friend, Mr Mould—I presume, with your sanction—-to ask me to address you, will be extended so far as to incline you to overlook my shortcomings. It is also possible that an exchange of ideas between the general physician and the alienist on the great subject of mental disorders may be productive of good to both. For between complete sanity and that degree of mental derangement which the law recognizes as insanity there is a wide border-land of disordered physical functions, in which the opportunities of the general physician for making observations may even be greater than those of the alienist himself, and it is from this border-land chiefly that I have culled the few observations which I propose to present to you to day.
3. German Retrospect
Authors: Ireland W. W.
Published: August 2008

The title of this pamphlet has its attraction, and the author excites our curiosity by promising to prove that in every man there are the traces of a second personality. After a little examination one finds that Mr. Dessoir has nothing new to tell us; he simply takes advantage of words used too vaguely to state a view which his evidence cannot sustain. It is true, as he says, that consciousness and memory are the two elements of personality. It is also admitted that a man may lose for a time the remembrance of the antecedent and accompanying circumstances of his daily life, the when, where, and how which he habitually carries about with him. This is lost in dreams, and sometimes is missing on the first awaking from sleep, and in deep reverie. It is generally lost in the state of somnambulism and in the induced condition of hypnotism. Mr. Dessoir tells us that the hypnotized person or the sleep-walker forgets his previous condition in the ordinary waking state, while his memory runs back to events and experiences in the previous condition of somnambulism or hypnotism. This is certainly not always the case, but granting that it often is so, we cannot admit that it proves a double personality any more than that the dreamer is a different person from the man awake. Moreover, the sleep-walker or hypnotized person is not entirely deprived of memory. He retains his powers of language and acquired accomplishments. It is deeply interesting and deeply mysterious that one human being should have his memory running along two distinct links of association as in the cases of Felida and Leonie, cited by Mr. Dessoir. He tells us that Wolfart relates a case in which a woman remembered what had happened to her thirteen years before in magnetic sleep, of which she had no memory in the waking condition. Nevertheless, double memory will not make two distinct beings; neither will the consciousness of two parallel acts. We quite agree with Max Dessoir that a man can follow out two mental processes at once, especially if they are of a dissimilar character. This was well-known to the old metaphysicians. It has been explained as owing to the two hemispheres exerting themselves independently of one another. Dessoir rejects this explanation in a very summary manner.
2. Therapeutic Retrospect
Authors: Sainsbury Harrington
Published: August 2008

The use of cocaine is so widespread that a few words of caution against its indiscriminate employment may not be superfluous. From time to time cases in which alarming symptoms have followed the use of cocaine are noted, but they do not attract much attention. Dr. Edmund Falk, of Berlin, is the more to be thanked for having collected and tabulated 176 cases of poisoning by therapeutic doses of cocaine. The dose employed, with its method of employment, and the results following the use, are carefully set down. Dr. Falk excludes from his table not a few cases of syncope which have been set down to cocaine, but which he considers may be referred to the operation itself. He is also of opinion that a majority of cases have not been published, and further that a large number of cases of insanity are to be found in the asylums, which have arisen from the prolonged use of cocaine. The 176 cases which he has tabulated will, therefore, fall very short of representing the real toxic dangers of cocaine. Ten fatal cases are to be found in the list. Two of these fatal cases followed the use of a four per cent, solution of cocaine applied to larynx or pharynx. One case followed the injection of 0·06 gramme (10 grain) beneath the mucous membrane of the gums; another, the subcutaneous injection of a little over three grains. The smallest dose causing death was 0·6 grain (0·04 gramme) injected subconjunctivally. Short of death, very alarming symptoms are frequently noted, such as pallor, cyanosis, vertigo, fainting, collapse, unconsciousness, more or less prolonged, delirium, hallucinations, diminished general and special sensibility, impairment of vision, deafness, etc., etc.
2. Retrospect of Criminal Anthropology.
Authors: Ellis Havelock , Laurent émile
Published: August 2008

This volume is the most interesting and the most remarkable record of a single worker in this field which has appeared since Marro's “Caratteri dei Delinquenti.” It cannot be ranked with the latter book, for Dr. Laurent has not accumulated the large body of minute facts concerning his subjects which Dr. Marro used in so admirable and judicial a manner, making a distinct advance in our knowledge of criminal anthropology. Being, however, less dry and technical, Dr. Laurent's work is much more generally attractive, and it also opens up some of the wider aspects of the subjects with which Marro was not directly concerned. His style, also, possesses in a high degree that lucidity and charm, holding the reader's interest through six hundred pages, which is so common among French scientific writers, and so rare in England and Germany. This remarkable record of his experience was produced by Dr. Laurent as the fruit of some years spent at the Infirmary of the Prisons de la Santé, its publication becoming possible by the enlightened policy of the French administration. How long will it be before we may expect similar records of their experience from English prison surgeons?
Prichard and Symonds, in especial Relation to Mental Science
Authors: Tuke D. Hack
Published: August 2008

I hope that you will agree with me that it is well to seize the occasion of our meeting in this locality to recall the memory of two remarkable physicians who practised for many years in Bristol—one, Dr. Prichard, who distinguished himself not only as an ethnologist, but as the author of by far the best English work on insanity in his generation, who was the most celebrated Medical Commissioner that ever sat at the Lunacy Board, and who produced a profound sensation in the legal and the psychological world by enunciating the doctrine of so-called “Moral Insanity,” the echoes of which have not yet died away, nor are likely to do so as long as crimes are committed, and the question of human responsibility has to be determined. The other, who will be ever remembered by those who knew him as the beloved physician, the late John Addington Symonds, the friend of Prichard, and one who, although not an alienist, felt a keen interest in, and had a great capacity for psychological research, having written several Essays, quite remarkable for their insight into some of those problems in psychology which we are yet far from having solved, and which we discuss with some heat even at the present moment.
On the Arithmetical Faculty and its Impairment in Imbecility and Insanity
Authors: Ireland William W.
Published: August 2008

The operation of counting is so familiar to us, and so easily brought under mental observation, that a definition of what it is in learned terms does not make anything clearer to our minds. The abstract idea in numbers is as many as, five, that is, as many fingers as I have, as many as you have, as many as your mouth and eyes and ears together, or as many as the sepals of the rose.
The Desirableness of Throwing Open our Asylums for the Post-Graduate Study of Insanity
Authors: Walmsley Francis H.
Published: August 2008

A distinguished historian well said “Before you attempt to write on any subject, be quite certain that you can say something fresh about it.”
Cases of Epilepsy treated by Hydrate of Amylene
Authors: Dunn Edwin L.
Published: August 2008

Dr. P. Naecke in the “Allgem. Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie” publishes some chronic cases of epilepsy successfully treated by hydrate of amylene. I purpose here to record the results of the use of the drug in 14 cases of epilepsy at the West Riding Asylum, Wakefield.
The Local Government Act of 1888: Its Probable Action on the Treatment of Insanity in England
Authors: Campbell J. A.
Published: August 2008

In the remarks which I am about to make I wish it clearly to be understood that, as I personally am not an accounting officer under the Act, I have no personal grievance to ventilate. In this asylum, not only I, but the other officials whose duty it is to make returns of an official nature, have always done so honestly, readily, and fully; and speaking not only for myself, but for others, we have formerly made, and hope in the future to make, all such returns in such a way as to comply with legal requirements, not only in the letter but the spirit of the law. And in such remarks as I make on our audit here, I wish to express myself plainly, but, at the same time, without the slightest suspicion of personal feeling to the auditor, who, I believe, acted conscientiously, and according to what he considered was the meaning of the law on the subject. At the same time, I doubt whether an auditor (in whom no legal or other qualifications are a necessity) is the fittest person to have the decision as to what is legal, expedient, and proper in the expenditure of a large county asylum. At present auditors certainly seem to think that their reading of the Lunacy Act should be accepted, no matter what the opinion of the committee and their legal advisers may be; and by surcharging items, they have it in their power to put committees and officials to such trouble that even if expenditure were proper, right, and in the interests both of the sane and insane inhabitants of asylums, yet one would hesitate about it with the knowledge of the correspondence, trouble, and annoyance which it might entail.
The Clinical History and Morbid Anatomy of a Case of Anterior Poliomyelitis with Peripheral Nerve Changes. with Illustration
Authors: Bullen F. St. John
Published: August 2008

R. P., æt. 61; married. Admitted into Wakefield Asylum March, 1885. Formerly labourer in a mill.

It was said that patient had been very intemperate, and that his wife and daughter had contracted venereal disease from him. His mother was stated to have been paralytic for several years before death. This is the only instance of family neurosis.
Cases of Insanity in General Practice
Authors: Newth A. H.
Published: August 2008

It is very possible that if medical men were asked to give an account of cases of insanity treated by them in general practice many, especially those who have given attention to the subject, would be able to show some good results. As, however, they do not have the accessories for successful treatment in every case, such as specially-trained nurses, the quietude and repose of asylum life, freedom from the worries of friends and relatives who, from want of judgment and tact, often do much harm, and from whom it is impossible in private life to isolate the patient entirely, physicians in general practice cannot be expected to be able to do so much as those engaged in asylums.
Asymmetrical Conditions met with in the Faces of the Insane; with some Remarks on the Dissolution of Expression
Authors: Turner John
Published: August 2008

In the case of Ellen D., a female general paralytic in an advanced stage of the disease, whenever she was spoken to her features would be distorted by an exaggerated grin; the eyes nearly closed by the action of the lower part of the orbicularis palpebrarum, mouth opened and its angles retracted, the upper lip excessively elevated showing the gum, the tongue lolled out between the teeth always on the left side, and enormously deep nasolabial folds produced, curving round the angles of the mouth and blending with each other on the end of the chin.
A Visit to some Foreign Asylums
Authors: Needham Frederick
Published: August 2008

I feel that an apology is due from me for the introduction of this paper, which is really unworthy of the name, and only purports to be a collection of rough notes put together at the times and in the places mentioned. As such I venture to offer them to you.
The Clinical History of Two Cases of Ataxic Paraplegia
Authors: Bullen F. St. John
Published: August 2008

H. P. B., formerly manager of printing works, æt. 60. Admitted (transfer) 31st July, 1891.

Mentally, slight chronic melancholia, without delusions. When first sent to an asylum, three years ago, had symptoms of mania.
Cases of Insanity in General Practice
Authors: Newth A. H.
Published: August 2008

I think much may be done as regards the treatment of insanity by studying the various delusions and endeavouring to trace a physical cause for them. It is a well-known fact that persons may be caused to dream of particular things if certain parts of the body are irritated, and delusions are often only persistent dreams.
2. German Retrospect
Authors: Ireland W. W.
Published: August 2008

Dr. S. Ramon Y. Cajal (“Neurologisches Centralblatt,” Nr. 22, 1891) has examined the cortex of the brain of new-born animals, rabbits, cats, and mice, after Golgi's method. He has found that the superficial nerve fibres (Krause's layer) seldom arise from the processes of ascending axis cylinders coming from the deeply situated pyramidal cells, but are connected with the ganglion cells of the higher layers of the cortex. These cells are difficult to recognize in grown animals. They are polygonal or spindle-shaped. Ramon never saw the axis cylinder processes of the small pyramidal cells reach the white substance—they branched off till they disappeared—but he succeeded in tracing the fibres of the corpus callosum into the axis cylinder processes of the larger and middle sized pyramidal cells, or into their branches.
3. Retrospect of Criminal Anthropology
Authors: Ellis Havelock
Published: August 2008

Prof. Ferri here discusses, in his accustomed broad and luminous method, the question of the criminal type and the nature of criminality. The article will be included in the forthcoming edition of his great work, “Nuovi Orrizonti del Diritto,” and as Ferri is the most philosophic member of the so-called “Italian school,” his account of the matter is worth summarizing.
Inquiries into a Variation of Type in General Paralysis
Authors: Bullen F. St. John
Published: August 2008

Under this heading I propose to make a few inquiries relative to the principal forms under which this disease shows itself, and more especially into the likelihood that it is undergoing some modifications under various influences. This latter possibility has impressed me for some time, and, on addressing several specialists on the subject, I find that no few share the same opinion. So far as the question of modified type is concerned, the difficulty which presents itself at the outset is that it is uncertain whether the older writers recognized general paralysis under the Protean aspects now known to us—supposing them to have existed—and it may be an error to assume that its now varied forms are extensions of, or deviations from, a more concise and specialized group of symptoms. If, on the other hand, we can rely upon the observations of those who have spent a considerable number of years in lunacy practice, and can at the same time by statistics indicate that noteworthy differences are becoming apparent between recent and former cases of general paralysis, some basis for belief in a variation of type may be assumed.
Notes on a Case of Acute Insanity with Sexual Perversion
Authors: Sullivan William C.
Published: August 2008

The case which, by the kind permission of my chief, Dr. Conolly Norman, I am enabled to bring under your notice to-day, is one of acute insanity occurring in a male adolescent, and marked in its course by the somewhat unusual symptom of sexual perversion.
General Paralysis Occurring about the Period of Puberty
Authors: Wiglesworth J.
Published: August 2008

We are in the habit of regarding general paralysis as in the main a disease of the prime of life—of a time when the fresh vigour of youth has subsided, but before the first touch of decay has laid its hand upon the organism; when the mental faculties are strained to the utmost in the pursuit of wealth or pleasure, or social distinction, or in the keen struggle for existence entailed upon so many of our race. We are not indeed unaccustomed to meet with cases of this disease occurring both before and after this epoch of life, but the association of general paralysis with the period of childhood and puberty has hitherto been a very unfamiliar idea. Nevertheless, scattered cases have from time to time been published which tend to show that the period of life which appears to offer most exemption from all the ordinary causes of the disease may still claim its victims, and that at, or about, the period of puberty cases may occur which, both clinically and pathologically, appear incapable of separation from the ordinary forms of the disease with which we are so familiar.
The Formation of Subdural Membranes, or Pachymeningitis Hæmorrhagica
Authors: Robertson George M.
Published: August 2008

At the commencement of our description of subdural membrane formation, we deferred consideration of the sudden lessening of intracranial pressure, which we regard as the most important cause of its production. This is a point we shall take up now, along with some other general questions connected with subdural membrane formation.
1. Pathological Retrospect.
Authors: Goodall Edwin
Published: August 2008

The subjoined scheme, drawn up by the writer eighteen months since, has been put to practical test at the West Riding Asylum during that time, and found to answer its purpose. Several practical suggestions made by Dr. C. H. Bond, Pathologist at Banstead Asylum, have been incorporated with it, and are here acknowledged. The corresponding scheme for the spinal cord it is proposed to give in a later number.
1. Pathological Retrospect
Authors: Goodall Edwin
Published: August 2008

Derkum (“Journ. Nervous and Mental Disease,” 1892, xvii.) gives an anatomical description of a (Chinese brain, the seventh which has been carefully examined. In this the features characteristic of the other brains were again noted, namely, unusual degree of convolution, disposition to anastomosis in the perpendicular and horizontal directions, and marked obliquity of the orbital surfaces of the frontal lobes (with the last-mentioned may probably be associated the peculiar position of the eyes in the Chinese). Blending of the central and Sylvian fissures is said to be a frequent feature of such brains. For other details see the original paper.
3. German Retrospect
Authors: Ireland W. W.
Published: August 2008

In the “Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie” (xlviii. Band, 3 Heft) there are published some statistics about the suicide of young persons, which are of terrible interest. During the six years 1883-88, 289 scholars committed suicide.
On the Construction of Public Lunatic Asylums
Authors: Arlidge J. T.
Published: August 2008

Among not a few less agreeable influences pervading lunatic asylums, there is one under whose effect every person concerned in the general management of those institutions is sure to come, viz., the architectural. No asylum superintendent is to be found, who has not various plans of renovation and improvement for his own institution, who does not see precisely the constructional arrangements which the insane require, and who has not, very generally, floating before his mental vision, asleep or awake, some grand scheme for a model asylum. Nor is this to be wondered at, when it is considered that the asylum building is the machine through and by which the superintendent is to work out and develope his system of moral management; that, in short, it is an instrument of cure, of the adequacy, utility, and perfectness of which he must be the best judge.
On Mental Physiology; or, the Correlations of Physiology and Psychology.
Authors: Dunn Robert
Published: August 2008

Mr. President,—I need not tell you, Sir, nor the Fellows of this Society, that the study of the human mind is a subject which has occupied the attention of the greatest philosophers of every age; nor need I remind you how long that study was enveloped in the shades of mysticism, bewildered in the mazes of metaphysical subtilty, amid the dogmata of conflicting systems. It is to Locke that we are so much indebted for dispelling the mysticism of the schoolmen. Unshackled from the tyranny of ancient names, and regardless alike of Aristotle and his categories, Locke discarded the syllogism, and instituted a searching analysis of the phenomena of thought.
On the Somatic and Psychical Causes of Disease in the Structure and Functions of the Brain, viewed more particularly in reference to Marriages of Consanguinity as a great social evil.
Authors: Burnett C. M.
Published: August 2008

Insanity, together with many other forms of disease affecting the brain, are doubtless upon the increase. Our statistical tables and periodical registers all clearly and unmistakeably tell us this. It is no advantage either to society at large, or to individuals composing that society, to try to beg the question. We cannot disprove the fact. Better, therefore, let us try to search out its causes, that, if possible, they may be removed. By taking this course, we shall sooner find our-selves in a more hopeful position for arresting the onward march of a formidable enemy to our national peace and prosperity.
On Warm and Cold Baths in the Treatment of Insanity
Authors: Tuke Harrington
Published: August 2008

The employment of warm and cold bathing in the treatment of the insane is of the highest antiquity. Three thousand years ago, long before Pindar had sung his famous αϱιστον μεν υδωϱ, or that Hippocrates, arid after him Celsus, Aretæus, and Galen, had given their testimony to the value of its application in head affections, and in nervous disorders; Melampus the Pylian, the first “alienist,” and indeed the first physician of whom we have any record, is said to have cured mania and melancholia by the administration of hellebore and the use of the warm bath. It may be mythical, that by the last prescription he restored the health of a princess, and gained a wife; but it is not the less true that his practice, as recorded or alluded to by Homer, Herodotus, and Ovid, was rational and successful; and that the first specialist appears to have well understood the efficacy of purgation, and the beneficial effects of bathing, in the treatment of mental disease.
On Melancholia: An Analysis of 730 Consecutive Cases
Authors: Farquharson W. P.
Published: August 2008

I proceed at once to the analysis of the cases that have come under treatment in this asylum. The 730 cases under consideration comprise all the cases of melancholia admitted into the Cumberland and Westmorland Asylum during the twenty-seven years from the beginning of 1865 to the beginning of 1892.
On Melancholia: An Analysis of 730 Consecutive Cases
Authors: Farquharson W. F.
Published: August 2008

I. Admissions.—The following table shows in decennial periods the numbers admitted at different ages, and the percentage proportion of admissions in each age-period:—