First annual report on the County Pauper Lunatic Asylum / Buckinghamshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • St. John's Hospital (Stone, Buckinghamshire, England)
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First annual report on the County Pauper Lunatic Asylum / Buckinghamshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In almost every case comprised under the first head, there is evidence of debility, and it is found when accurate information can be obtained, that the attack has been preceded by grief or some other powerful emotion, causing continued attention of the mind to one subject, and loss of sleep. The suddenness and violence of the attack, varies with the duration and intensity of the exciting cause, together with the previous habits and condition of the individual as regards health and hereditary predisposition. In the medical treatment of these cases, from the general indications of debility, and diminished intensity of the organic actions of the grey matter of the cerebrum, evidenced in their incoherence from want of sleep, the chief remedial means used, are tonics to improve the digestion, a full supply of nutritious food to prevent exhaustion, and sedatives to procure sleep, the natural restorer of the exhausted brain. Case No. 147. A steady industrious man, married and 64 years of age, had been out of work for some time, and because he was unable to continue his payments to a club to which he had for many years subscribed, his name was removed from the books; this so grieved him, together with his inability to obtain employment that he could not sleep, and his mind gradually gave way. When admitted six weeks after he showed symptoms of derangement, he talked with great incoherence and excitement, and was in delicate health, being spare and haggard in appearance. A generous diet, gentle aperients, and a sedative at bedtime soon calmed him, and he was able to leave stout and well in three months. When Insanity is associated with general paralysis, my observation of these cases leads me to believe that the mental disturbance is, in a large majority of cases, a secondary affection, and merely evidence of the extension of the original disorder to the organ of the mind. Close enquiry can gene¬ rally elicit the existence of the first symptom of the disease, viz. tremor of the lip and indistinctness of the articulation, long before the mind becomes affected. In these cases there is a general debility of the voluntary motor power, the pupils are often unequally dilated, and sometimes contracted to a point, the appetite is voracious, and whatever their appearance may indi¬ cate, they are in a low tone of health, wounds and bruises are easily caused and slow to heal. The mental disturbance is marked by the uniformly exalted character of their ideas, impaired memory of recent events, and the erroneous impressions they have of their own bodily condition, they believe that their wealth and power is unbounded, are unable to recollect events of a few hours’ occurrence, and say that they are in the best of health. Every remedy from which the slightest benefit could be expected,