The medical jurisprudence of insanity / J.M. Pagan.

  • Pagan, J. M. (John MacMichan), 1802-1868.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical jurisprudence of insanity / J.M. Pagan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    brought home to him by his wife, brought on the crisis which had been long approacliing. Having given vent to the most passionate expressions, and threatened violence of the most serious character, he quitted his home, forsook his family and his business, wandered about the country, sleeping in the open air, and subsisting by the meanest artifices. His friends at length found him and consigned him to my care. Twelve months had fully elapsed from the time when they discovered a change in his natural habits. When I received him, the expression of his coun- tenance was animated and lively; great activity was indi- cated by the quickness of his eye, but the unsteadiness of his look, together with a quivering smile playing about his lips, marked it as an activity without object or motive. His face was pallid, the conjunctiva finely injected, the pupil contracted, the head was hotter than the rest of the body, and the hair which was very thin, then felt crisp; the tongue was foul, and the bowels constipated; the liands and feet were colder than the rest of the body, and the former had that soft feel peculiar to the highly nervous; the pulse was slower than natural, feeling full and bound- ing, but it could be compressed, and the current of blood checked by the slightest pressure; the respiration was tranquil and regular, slow and scarcely perceptible by looking at the chest. In conduct and manner he was anxious, eager to be doing something, moving from place to place without any apparent object, removing every ar- ticle of furniture that was moveable; abounding in specula- tions and new projects; proposing long journeys to be exe- cuted in haste; talking incessantly, but coherently, and for the most part rationally, upon a great variety of subjects; he used no expressions of antipathy against his family, nor, indeed, against any person, but it was evident that the mention of his wife or children greatly increased his agita-