Contributions to the study of insanity and its treatment, &c., &c.

  • Clouston, T. S. (Thomas Smith), 1840-1915.
Date:
1863-[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to the study of insanity and its treatment, &c., &c. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    lasted for a fortnight. At the beginning of one of these attacks I gave half-drachm doses of bromide, of potassium three times a day, and the excitement ceased within twenty-four hours. The patient continued to take the medicine for two months and got better men- tally than she had been for several years. It was discontinued to see if the effect was permanent, but an attack of excitement came on at once, and the medicine, though it has since controlled and modi- fied such attacks, yet has never quite stopped them. Another case was that of a woman who for a long time had had an attack of acute excitement every three or four years, the attack usually lasting from six months to a year. She became suddenly maniacal, and got at first drachm doses of bromide thrice a day without any good effect, then half-drachm doses combined with half-drachm doses of tincture of cannabis, but still the excitement was daily getting more intense till she was incoherent, noisy, sleepless, dirty in her habits and vio- lent. The quantity was increased after a few days to forty-five grains of the one and forty-five minims of the other every three hours, with the effect of completely allaying excitement, so that in two days she was removed back to the convalescent ward, remained rational, indus- trious, and apparently well in mind for a week, during which time she got no medicine. At the end of that time the excitement began again, and is now running its usual course; its symptoms, however, being wonderfully controlled by forty-five grain doses of the bromide with forty-five minims of tincture of cannabis twice or three times a day. She has taken this for three months, and though far from coherent or rational, yet sleeps, and is not destructive or dirty or violent, as she used to be and is now, when the medicine is stopped. She has lost in weight very much, but takes her food well. The comparative loss in weight as compared with former attacks I am not able to say, as she was not weighed in the different stages of former attacks. Another case is that of an old woman who has taken periodic attacks of mania for at least twenty years, and has been so much better during her last attack under the use of drachm doses of the bromide and tinc- ture of cannabis morning and evening, that she has been kept in the infirmary ward of the asylum during the nine months the attack has lasted, and has during that time slept in a dormitory with other patients, has taken her food, and. is now passing into the quiet stage of her disorder. In every attack which had occurred before, she had been destructive, dirty, very noisy, and had to be all the time in the refractory ward. In one or two cases of very severe excitement the attempt to suppress it by often repeated doses of the medicine has seemed to do harm. The patients got into a state resembling acute dementia, and their nutrition was much interfered with. In one case to which I referred, where the person was old, very weak, and the pulse very