Thoughts on the causation of insanity / by John P. Gray.

  • Gray, John P. (John Purdue), 1825-1886.
Date:
[1872?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thoughts on the causation of insanity / by John P. Gray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    ism, as a unit, differs according to the structural elements involved. Hence, some organs are denominated vital, because their lesion is more important as being capable of originating more or less profound general disturb- ance or even death. But even the structure of these vital organs may occasionally be deeply involved by disease or accident without determining any material disturbance in the natural operations of the body. Necrobiosis, a term happily introduced by Virchow, may and does often take place in the brain to an exten- sive degree without any apparent sign of its existence in the mentality of the individual. Thus, through the same unknown process, the lungs, kidneys, &c, may undergo considerable degeneracy of their structure without pro- ducing any conspicuous constitutional disturbance. Let it be understood, however, that in noticing this well- acknowledged fact, we do not pretend to assert that under such circumstances life is normally carried on, for so far, the fact only proves that we fail to appreciate the abnormal phenomena attending the organic changes here in question. In the celebrated case of Phineas Gage, reported by Dr. Henry I. Bigelow, (American Journal Medical Sciences, July, 1856,) the patient, by the premature discharge of a blast, had a tamping- iron, with which he was ramming down the powder, driven through the head from below upwards. The bar, three and a half feet long, and weighing thirteen pounds, entered at the ramus of the left jaw, passing under the zygomatic arch, behind the eye, through the anterior part of the left hemisphere, and across the corpus callo- sum and the margin of the right hemisphere, involving the loss of the whole central part of the left anterior lobe, together with exten- sive laceration of the spheroidal, or middle lobe, the right central lobe, the falx and the longitudinal sinus. The patient not only made a perfect recovery in a physical sense, but by every known test that was applied either subjectively or objectively to his mind failed to exhibit the slightest impairment of any intellectual faculty. Prof. John Ordronaux, who saw Gage shortly after the accident