The mental affections of children : idiocy, imbecility and insanity / by William W. Ireland.

  • Ireland, William W. (William Wotherspoon), 1832-1909.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The mental affections of children : idiocy, imbecility and insanity / by William W. Ireland. 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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    When we say that idiocy is hereditary in the family of those of a neurotic constitution, we rather add a new mystery to the wonderful phenomena of life, than give any explanation of what we wish to account for. Why should a child inherit a disease from which its parents are free? Why should he inherit from his ancestors, generations removed, an affection from which their own children had escaped ? In most cases the hereditary tendency alone is insufficient to be the cause of idiocy without the assistance of other influences favouring this unhappy sequence. Were this not the case, all the children in such families would be idiotic, which rarely happens. These accessory causes act with unusual efficacy upon individuals of a neurotic tendency, and probably determine the cast of the resultant disease, whether it is to census of 1873. Dr Langdon Down, out of 2000 cases of idiocy, found that in 45 per cent, there were well-marked neuroses in the families of one or both parents. If the neuroses were marked on the mother's side, the first children were the most affected If on the father's side, he found that it was the later born children who were affected. Dr Fletcher Beach found a history of hereditary pre- disposition in 76 per cent. Koch (op. cil., p. 155) found hereditary diseases in one-third of the cases of insanity which he examined. In 20 per cent, of his cases, hereditary influence seemed excluded, while in about 45 per cent, no reliable information could be obtained. Koch observes that, if we exclude the cases in which the condition of parents and relatives is unknown, we shall have 60 per cent, of the idiots and 63 percent, of the insane who have neurotic relations,! and 39 per cent, for the former, and 36 per cent, for the latter, in which a hereditary cause seems absolutely wanting. In the cases in which the idiocy was traced to a family neurosis, the nervous affection appeared in the parents or grandparents in 92 per cent., and in the collateral relations only in 7 per cent. Koch found that 24 per cent, of idiots had brothers and sisters who were abnormal, while with the insane there were only 16 per cent.; hence he is inclined 10 think that heredity is more potent as a cause in idiocy than in insanity. Dr Isaac Kerlin {Enumeration, Classification, and Causation of Idioc\\ Phila- delphia, 1880) in the hundred families which he examined, found 'as a concurrence, imbecility and insanity begetting idiocy' in 27 per cent. Dr Rogers of Glenwood, Iowa, found marked hereditary neuroses in 25 per cent, of the cases which he examined. Mr Hermann Piper {Zur s£tio/ogie dtr Idwten, Berlin, 1893) found that 18 per cent, of the congenital idiots at Dalldorf had nervous diseases in the parents and relations. In these cases, 60 per cent, of the neuroses were with the parents,