Acute confusional insanity / by Conolly Norman.

  • Norman, Conolly.
Date:
[1890]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Acute confusional insanity / by Conolly Norman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    500 Acute Confusional Insanity. (12) Prognosis (as to the liability (12) Prognosis (as to the liability of the system becoming affected) of the system becoming affected) unfavourable. always favourable unless in mixed sores. Art. XX.—Acute Confusional Insanity.* By Conolly Norman, Medical Superintendent, Richmond (Dublin District) Asylum. The form of insanity to which I wish very briefly to call atten- tion has not, so far as I am aware, met with recognition in this country hitherto. This is not due to its rarity, however, as there can be no doubt of the truth of Salgb’s dictum, that acute confusion is the most common of all forms of insanity, even though we should not accept in full the conditions which make this author’s definition of the state somewhat wider than that which we ourselves admit. If it were necessary to indicate in the shortest and most gene- rally comprehensible way the relations of this affection to the states of alienation usually recognised under the names applied by Pinel, one would say that acute confusional insanity stood between acute mania and acute primary dementia. This statement of its position will at once show to those familiar with the treatment of early cases of insanity in the forms ordinarily met with in general practice how large are its contents, for cases occupying this inter- mediate ground must have struck everyone by their frequency, and by the difficulty of satisfactorily denominating them under the older headings. Acute confusional insanity may be described as a condition of mental disturbance of comparatively rapid oncome, characterised by a dream-like engagement of consciousness, and a tendency to abundant hallucinations of one or more senses. According as the confusion or the hallucinations predominate does any individual case resemble acute dementia or mania (melan- cholia). Predominance of confusion corresponds to the delusional stupor of Newington, and where hallucinations give the prevailing tone the condition is that which Mendel has named hallucinatory mania. In average cases I have not found hallucinations of the senses so very prominent a symptom as some authorities have taught, and I a Read before the Section of Medicine in the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, on Friday, May 1C, 1890.