Some practical notes on the symptoms, treatment, and medico-legal aspects of insanity : a paper read at a meeting of the Chester Medical Society, held on Friday, March 7th, 1890 / by T.N. Brushfield.

  • Brushfield, Thomas Nadauld.
Date:
[1890]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some practical notes on the symptoms, treatment, and medico-legal aspects of insanity : a paper read at a meeting of the Chester Medical Society, held on Friday, March 7th, 1890 / by T.N. Brushfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    SOME PRACTICAL HINTS ON T SYMPTOMS, TREATMENT, AND ME ASPECTS OF INSANITY IN the preparation of the following notes, on some of the principal causes, leading symptoms, and treatment of insanity, and some of its leading complications, as well as on certain medico-legal topics incident to the subject, I have endeavoured to keep one main object in view, viz., to deal generally with such practical matters as may be of ser- vice to medical men engaged in practice, whose opportunities for observing and treating this disease, are, as a rule, few and fitful. I have, therefore, not attempted to give a simple epitome of the malady, but have selected certain points that appeared to me the most worthy, from a practical point of vuew, to bring under your notice. It is much to be regretted that examining boards pay so little attention to the subject of insanity. It is certainly a great anomaly, that while ordinary cerebral diseases and their sequelae, frequently, and very properly, furnish themes for ex- amination questions ; as soon as their importance is increased by the addition of symptoms of mental disturbance, the sub- ject Is almost ignored in the general pass examinations. I know of nothing more fraught with anxiety to a medical man, than to be hastily summoned to attend a case of acute insanity, (no other practitioner probably being at hand, with whom to divide the responsibility), the family in their trouble, looking up to him for aid, professional and lay, unless he possesses some knowledge of the distressful malady he is called upon to treat.* * The following extracts are transcribed from minutes of evidence taken by a committee of the London Council, appointed to report on a special hospital for the insane (1889). Sir John Banks.— It frequently happens that a man may be called upon to determine what may be a matter of life and death, or which may involve a large amount of property, and yet he may have never seen an insane person before. Dr. Ferrier.— Students are turned out into the world to practice their profession, and to deal with insane people, without, perhaps, ever having seen a lunatic. Professor Marshall.—At present it is of course quite possible for an inex- perienced junior medical man to be called upon suddenly to see a case of insanity, and thereupon to give a certificate which carries most formidable consequences with it; and I have had under my own observation instances of such junior practitioners really being at a loss to know what to do.