A manual of medical jurisprudence : with special reference to diseases and injuries of the nervous system / by Allan McLane Hamilton.

  • Hamilton, Allan McLane, 1848-1919.
Date:
1890, [©1887]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence : with special reference to diseases and injuries of the nervous system / by Allan McLane Hamilton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    others having a pathological significance. He further divides idiopathic insanity into sthenic and asthenic with regard to the dynamic expression of the mental derangement. The true division of the subject, however, should be a simple one, and it is injudicious to specialize etiological conditions, which may, after all, have the same method of expression. The first three varieties of insanity to be considered are those characterized by mental feebleness and include idiocy, imbecility, and dernentia. The first is considered by some authors to be congenital and acquired; I think, however, the so-called acquired idiocy should be defined as imbecility. Idiocy, then, is a congenital condition manifested by imper- fect development of both mind and body. The idiot is either non compos, or his capacity is, as Pinel has observed, below that of another person of his own age. In some cases the intelli- gence is even upon a par with that of some of the lower animals, and his mental expression is chiefly emotional. He manifests feeble degrees of pleasure when he is shown bright objects, and indulges in fitful and short-lived gusts of passion without cause. He delights in rhythmical musical sounds, and is fond of repeating one word over and over, or indulges in automatic movements. The instinct of the idiot is animal, and his habits are of the most repulsive kind ; without the restraint of judgment he gratifies every appetite, however low. In completely idiotic persons there is no sign of recognition, no indication of mem- ory, and the intellectual capacity is not to be compared to that of some intelligent animals. There is the absence of the mental apparatus, the absence probably of a sufficient number of sen- sory cells and their connecting filaments, and the result is the absence of mind. Balfour Browne says : Thus we see that an idiot is a person so thoroughly without mind that all mental cultivajtion has been, and is, out of the question. It is as difficult to make money without some capital, either in money or the power to labor, as to acquire knowledge without a brain. To distinguish idiocy clearly from dementia with which it is sometimes confounded, it must be remembered that the former is a congenital absence or at least serious defect of all the faculties of mind, while de- mentia may be regarded as the gradual obliteration of faculties which have been possessed. There are idiots, however, in whom the imperfection of the cerebral structures is not so extreme, and in whom the above-