On failure of brain-power / by Julius Althaus.

Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On failure of brain-power / by Julius Althaus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    sensations and desires, incite us to the performance of certain actions; and without their ruling power we should be unable not only to perform any of the higher intellectual operations which fall to our lot in life, but likewise to restrain our animal impulses, so that without them society could not be kept together. Where their influence is temporarily in abeyance, as in epileptic vertigo or automatism, murder, rape, and arson may be committed on the slightest provocation. The frontal lobes are subject to the same struc- tural diseases as other portions of the brain, viz., haemorrhage, softening, tumours, and inflammation; but they may also sufier from simple loss of power without organic disease, when we assume a disturb- ance of molecular nutrition in the grey nerve-cells of which they consist. This may be brought about by various causes, some of which are intiinsic, while others are adventitious. An unstable nervous system transmitted from parent to ofispring; ex- cessive mental exertion; sexual irregularities and excesses, more especially masturbation; the worry and anxiety inseparable from a high state of civilisa- tion ; and some of the acute diseases, such as small- pox, typhoid fever, and scarlet fever, have appeared to me to act as the most frequent causes of this condition. Age seems to have but little influence, as this asthenia occurs almost at any time of life