Mental stigmata of degeneration / by Arthur Mac Donald.

  • MacDonald, Arthur, 1856-1936.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mental stigmata of degeneration / by Arthur Mac Donald. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The pathological anatomical classification would be ideal, if there were sufficient knowledge of the real causes of different forms of insanity. Insanity may be divided into two general classes ; i Hereditary Insanity, that is, where there is a predisposition ; and 2, Accidental Insanity, that is, where mental disease is an incident in the life of the normal individual. But here predisposition can be used only in a relative quantita- tive sense. For in every disease there must be some slight pre- disposition or tendency, some soil or spot with little cr no resist- ance. Accidental Causes of Insanity.—An individual can become insane from a series of moral shocks, reverse of fortune, loss of a dear friend, or from an exhausting chronic affection, or acute disease with long and painful convalescence, or from intoxications, as alcoholism or morphinism, and the like. The brain can be put in such a morbid state of weak resistance as to lose its equilibrium at the least unfavorable influence. Relation of Insanity to Degeneration.—But there are numbers of persons who have been subject to such conditions and who have not become insane. There must be a difference between these individuals and the others, and this difference probably is one of predisposition or tendency, no predisposition, or slight tendency to insanity. Those predisposed may be divided into: 1. The predisposed simply. 2. The predisposed with degeneracy. The Predisposed to Insanity Simply.—These have the simple forms of insanity as mania and melancholia, without troubles of the intelligence properly speaking. All these simple forms con- sist in general delirium, affecting the entire understanding. Ac- cording to Magnan, there is no intellectuality delirium properly speaking; there are no creations due to aberrations of reason or imagination. There are elementary disorders essentially trans- itory. Mania and melancholia may be placed with intermediate insanity and chronic delirium. Those Predisposed until Degeneracy.—These have intellectual and moral personality, transformed at its basis through the progressive influence of predisposition. Those predisposed, but without degeneracy, have a normal brain, but fragile. In these with degeneracy in addition, their ' mental constitution is at all times abnormal. This fundamental degenerative taint may manifest itself in anomalies of sentiment, intelligence, instincts or inclinations, or it may assume physical anomalies, the signification of which is added to the concomitant mental anomalies. All these stigmata are permanent and born with the individual, and continue until death.