Blood examinations in a case of dementia precox with periodical variations / by Dr. Gunnar Kahlmeter, Stockholm, Sweden ; translated by Dr. Chas. O. Carlstrom.

  • Kahlmeter, Gunnar
Date:
[1915?]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Blood examinations in a case of dementia precox with periodical variations / by Dr. Gunnar Kahlmeter, Stockholm, Sweden ; translated by Dr. Chas. O. Carlstrom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ©ementia $recox BLOOD EXAMINATIONS IN A CASE ’DEMENTIA PRECOX WITH PERIODICAL VARlXl-iONS. S'jd* & SA*>»■■■■— —”. (. / By DR. GUNNAR KAHLMETER, StockkoiAi, Sweden Translated by Dr. Chas. O. Carlstrom.* Twenty years ago studies of the blood in the insane were made and published in foreign countries. English, French and Italian investigators especially had focused their attention on this question. As so often before has happened in the history of medicine, the Germans then took it up and carried it further. Here in Sweden these examinations have never aroused any great interest and, as far as I know, Lundvall is the only one who has published anything pertaining to them. He has reached conclusions that in important points differ from those reached by other students and there¬ fore he has been exposed to rather harsh criticism from some sources. Especially the periodic changes that he found in the blood of dementia precox patients, the “blood-crises,” have been looked upon with skepticism. My examinations were undertaken to disclose if such “blood-crises” really existed in a case which, on account of whose periodic course and short and rather regular periods, seemed eminently fitted for serial examinations of the blood. N. E. W. was born in 1876. He is married and has four children. His parents were not related and neither of them has shown any peculiari¬ ties in temperament, deportment or habits. Ho case of nerve or brain trouble is known in the family, with the exception of W/s grandmother, who at the age of eighty-one years suffered an apoplectic stroke which left her very paretic and “silly.” *Th'is paper was originally published in Nordisches Medizinisches Archiv, Stockholm, Sweden, 1914, XLVII, No. 29, pp.1-22. Through the kind offices of Chas. O. Carlstrom, a graduate of the Royal Gym¬ nastic State Institute of Stockholm, Sweden, this greatly abridged translation is presented among the Dementia Precox Studies. Considerable space was occu¬ pied with a review of the literature on the condition of the blood in this disease which does not seem necessary at this time for American readers. Other liberties in the way of abbreviation have been taken and in places Dr. Carlstrom’s very accurate and close translation has been sacrificed to meet our idiom or custom of expression. A very long table, containing the details of the examinations on which the two curves are founded has been omitted. The more serious students of this subject will not be put out because, they would consult the original anyway, and the cursory reader will find enough in the two curves which we reproduce. The expenses incident to the circulation of this article have been provided by one of the friends of the insane.—Bayard Holmes. Reprinted from the Chicago Medical Recorder, April issue, 1915