Insanity and allied neuroses : practical and clinical / by George H. Savage.

  • Savage, George H. (George Henry), 1842-1921.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity and allied neuroses : practical and clinical / by George H. Savage. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    10/564 (page 2)
    Tliere are flaws on the physiological side, and defects on the mental. Insanity has to be looked npon from two different aspects. From the physician's side it has to be considered as a disease of the brain, or a disorder of the mind, quite apart from any consideration of responsibility whatever. From the other side, that is, as seen by ordinary members of society, insanity is scarcely recognised until it inter- feres, in one way or another, with the laws that bind society together. Later on I shall trace the origin, of some of the most marked forms of insanity, and I shall be able to point out that the earliest symptoms of unsoundness of mind can often be traced far back into a period in the lives of the patients when they were ap]oarently fulfilling every social and moral duty. Even at this time, from the medical point of view, these people were suffering from unsoundness of mind, which would in the end destroy both body and mind. It will be my duty chiefly to consider in- sanity from the physician's point of view, and in doing so we shall see that a man's sanity is to be gauged purely by what is his own normal standard. A man, in fact, must be considered as sane or insane in relation to himself. The old and oft- repeated statement that insanity is a perversion of the ego is absolutely true. Sanity and insanity, then, are to be measured by differences or changes of habit, taste, and disposition in the individual, as well as by other symptoms of change in the nervous centres. The difference will necessarily be seen to be one not only-of degree, but one of time, so that a man being sane, may, without warning, become insane witiiin a short period. I shall take it for granted that insanity depends upon change in the nervous structures of the body ; but by no means shall 1 restrict the causation of insanity to changes in the brain alone. Many cases will have to be considered in which the insanity