Graves's disease / by Arthur Maude.

  • Maude, Arthur.
Date:
[1894]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Graves's disease / by Arthur Maude. 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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    stantly for five years, and almost daily for months together. She had for two years constant variations in the size of the thyroid: it was never much enlarged during that time, but was never the same two days running, and occasionally I found it vary almost from hour to hour. Without such continuous observation she might easily have been described as having no goitre, for she had not noticed it herself. I do not press this prevalence of bronchocele as an setiological factor in the production of Graves's disease in my part of the country, the more so because there are two factors tending to pro- duce neuroses, which are worth attending to, and which are both in full force round me. 1st. In America there is a growing opinion that neuroses are particularly common in parts of the country where a quiet rural life is being rapidly exchanged for a more active, highly com- petitive civilisation, where frequent trains, posts, and telegrams have been rather suddenly introduced. 2ndly. In country villages the milder imbeciles, the feeble intelligences sprung of neurotic families, always marry with other imbeciles of like lineage, because no other girls will look at them. I know a young man whose father is a drunkard, whose mother and aunt were half-witted, who had one brother a suicidal melan- cholic, and another epileptic; he must needs marry an hysterical girl whose mother has hystero-epilepsy of a well pronounced type, whose aunts are two of them very hysterical, and a third has Graves’s disease, and the latter has several feeble-witted children, one of whom is epileptic. This well-selected pair have children : I could produce dozens of such cases. These feeble-minded neurotic young women in villages get married to the exclusion of better girls, because in many cases they are seduced and the seducer is forced by public opinion to marry them. This factor in the production of neurotic offspring is not at work in towns, for social and economic reasons on which we need not touch here. It is interesting to enquire whether Graves’s disease is on the increase. On this point the opinion of this Society should be of value. The figures of admission to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, as an example, show that from 1870 to 1880 only 17 cases were admitted, but from 1880 to 1890 53 cases came in. This may be due merely to a better recognition of the disease on the parts of house physicians and others.