A manual of psychological medicine : containing the history, nosology, description, statistics, diagnosis, pathology, and treatment of insanity, with an appendix of cases / by John Charles Bucknill and Daniel Hack Tuke.

  • Bucknill, John Charles, 1817-1897.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of psychological medicine : containing the history, nosology, description, statistics, diagnosis, pathology, and treatment of insanity, with an appendix of cases / by John Charles Bucknill and Daniel Hack Tuke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in the first instance^ gradually allowed after tlie use of fruits^ but then only of light quality. As the mind recovered its tone, the patient was allowed to go and hear the disputations of the philosophers, from the per- suasion that the passions of grief, fear, and anger, were thus dissipated. If, on the contrary, the patient relapsed, the former treatment was to be resumed, adding sternutatories, an emetic made from the root of white hellebore, &c. The ears were to be injected with water containing a little nitre, honey, nettle-seed, or mustard; the rationale given being that even through the channels of the senses, a restorative virtue may be conveyed to the mem- branes of the brain, especially as patients are often affected with tinnitus aurium. Finally, the cure of the patient was to be established by travelling and sea voyages. After thus stating the mode of treatment which recommended itself to his judgment, Cselius proceeds to condemn the practice of some who had preceded him. Some of the Methodici, he observes, have prescribed close confinement in a dark room, forgetting, that the patient's dislike to it may aggravate his dis- order, and that too much seclusion from the air causes dense bodies to perspire, and that the omission of ordinary occupations will aggravate cerebral congestion. He then denounces the ex- treme abstinence which was recommended in forgetfulness of the fact, that such a course disorders the bodily powers, and is one which the patient will be unable to bear. The supporters of such a regimen referred to the taming of wild beasts as ana- logous, and as a proof that madness may be thus repressed; but Cselius, anticipating the practice of the present day, retorts that they should have known better, from a consideration of the effect of hunger upon the sane, in inducing rage. He does not hesitate to assert, that the starving system will induce madness rather than cure it. He then refers to a subject of especial interest to us in our time, and his observations are calculated to humiliate us, exhibiting, as they do, a far-seeing philanthropy which those who have treated the insane have, until very recently, failed to imitate. Caelius observes, that they also order the patients to be bound with chains, without any consideration that the bound parts must necessarily be chafed, and how much more properly the patients might be restrained by the care of attendants than by senseless chains.