On the increase of diseases of the nervous system and of insanity / by William W.Ireland.

  • Ireland, William W. (William Wotherspoon), 1832-1909.
Date:
[1900]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the increase of diseases of the nervous system and of insanity / by William W.Ireland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    paralysis are now often wanting. But this, he thinks, may be because those cases in which such exalted ideas are not observed were not formerly classed under the heading of general paralysis. Dr William M'Lachlan of Dumbarton has no doubt that diseases of the nervous system are increasing. He has ob- served an atonic irritative condition to be more common. The patients feel that they are on the verge of losing their mental balance. The causes of this are commercial competition, social aping at what the income must be strained to meet, stock ex- change gambling to catch fortune by a few lucky deals. In the female, sexual indulgence and the using of measures to obviate pregnancy—uterine disappointment followed by motor and volitional disturbance. Acute sthenic diseases are not so common. Pneumonia and fevers are more of the adynamic type than when he first met them twenty-five years ago. Hysteria is not so common ; tennis and the cycle are helping to give it a quietus. This recalls the old question of a change of type in fevers and inflammations which was debated half a century ago between Doctors Allison and Christisonon the one side, and Dr Hughes Bennett on the other. Dr Halliday Douglas, long physician to the General Post- Office at Edinburgh, saw many cases of nervous derangements and failures of health amongst the employes, especially those who did their work under high pressure. The female clerks often required leave of absence from illness. I have learned from several sources that monotonous work demanding severe and unremitting attention is most trying for the nerves and assists in causing mental derangement. Thus nervous diseases and insanity are especially common with telegraphists, letter-sorters, and persons who have to check mechanical labour. From all the answers which I have received I should judge that there has been no noticeable increase in the number of diseases in the country districts and in small towns, but there is some evidence that there has been an increase in those com- plaints in large towns, especially in functional disorders such as neurasthenia. Probably this increase affects some classes, and persons of special pursuits more than others.