A manual of psychological medicine : containing the history, nosology, description, statistics, diagnosis, pathology, and treatment of insanity, with an appendix of cases / by John Charles Bucknill and by Daniel H. Tuke.

  • Bucknill, John Charles, 1817-1897.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of psychological medicine : containing the history, nosology, description, statistics, diagnosis, pathology, and treatment of insanity, with an appendix of cases / by John Charles Bucknill and by Daniel H. Tuke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    61/572 (page 59)
    we may be able to approximate to the numbers of the insane among ourselves, or in other civilized countries, there exists no parallel series of facts with which to compare them, among those nations which are in a state of barbarism. Nor can it, for one moment, be doubted, that the apparently greater extent of insanity among civil- ized nations (as well as the great apparent increase of insanity in recent times), is, in a great measui-e, satisfactorily explained by the obvious fiict, that these, much more completely than barbarous na- tions, know of the existence of insane persons, and recognize mental disease as such. And there are various other reasons why uncivilized nations should appear to be less subject to insanity than is actually the case. Thus, weakly children, including imbeciles, would be generally neglected (except when regarded superstitiously), and among some nations (as the Esquimaux) put to death. The same remark attaches to the aged, who, on this account, rarely afibrd examples of superannuation. The testimony of travellers, however, although to be received with extreme caution, as necessarily based on more or less imperfect sources of information, must not be disregarded, but be accepted as the nearest approach we can make to the statistics of insanity in un- civilized countries. After much inquiry, says Rush, I have not been able to find a single instance of/aim'^y among the Indians, and but few instances melancholy madness; and subsequently he contrasts their comparative immunity from nervous diseases, with the diseases of civilized countries; observing, that according to Cullen's nosology, these latter amount to 1387; of which, 612 are comprised in the single class of neuroses. Dr. Lillybridge, of. Virginia, under a government appointment, paid special attention to the diseases of the American Indians: yet he neither saw, nor heard any mention made of, a case of madness among them. Again, Dr. Butler, of America, who lived twenty-five years among the Cherokee Indians, never witnessed a well-marked instance of insanity, although he had known delirium to arise in the course of other diseases ninety-five times. lie also states, that an intelligent chief, 80 years of age, informed him that he had never seen any Indian affected in the way those were whom ho had seen in the Philadelphia asylum. If from the American Indians wc pass on to the African continent, we may avail ourselves of the valuable testimony of Dr. Morcau of