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?]
Catalogue details

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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    intense!v. It was obvious that his interests were dulled and less acute than one would expect by a person with his intellect and education. Wds physical condition was as follows: Height 175 cm., weight 72 kg., no stigmata of degeneration; heart, lungs and kidneys without a blem¬ ish; thyroid not palpable; temperature during the free intervals normal, during the disturbed periods, especially the first days of them, mostly some¬ what higher, although never above 30 0. Pupils round, equally large, me- diumly wide, reaction normal for light and accommodation. Other cranial nerves free from remarks. Motility and sensibility normal. Skin and tendon reflexes normal. Our patient was a man thirty-three years old, who during adolescence showed himself rather silent and self-critical. After some time of severe intellectual work, during which he became nervous, absent-minded and peculiar, he suddenly in October, 1909, was taken down with a condition of mental aberration and high psychic and motor disturbance. But pretty soon he became calmer and later during the same year presented rather fluctuating states. Some days he was fully clear and rational, even con¬ scious of his condition; other days he was irrational and violent, exhibited a number of stereotype movements, impulsive and uncalled for and pur¬ poseless acts, and he manifested hypochondriac thought complexes and hallucinations. After a long quiet period during the winter of 1910-1911 he suffered, during the summer of 1911, a relapse. The picture was about the same with sudden variations between violent disturbances and seemingly good health. Toward the end of 1912 the disease began to assume a fixed period¬ icity, so that the disturbed period lasted about five days, the other periods about seven or eight days. And this condition still existed when in March and April, 1913, I undertook my blood examinations. The diagnosis appeared to be very simple at first. The whole story of the violent, little affectingly colored uneasiness, the mass of stereotype movements and sayings, the purposeless impulsive acts, carried out with¬ out seeming affectation—everything pointed toward dementia precox and especially catatonia. Ivraeplin himself, at whose clinic the patient stayed one week, also understood it to be a case of dementia precox. The further progress of the case, however, has been such as to make it impossible to entirely overlook the possibility that it may belong to the manic-depressive group. What makes a consideration of this possibility justified is partly that the attacks of uneasiness of late have been more colored by affectation (during the first days of the sick spells the humor is high, during the intermediate days highly depressed, and during the last days again raised), partly that no plain dementia has come about in