Mental diseases / by Frederick Peterson.

  • Peterson, Frederick, 1859-1938.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mental diseases / by Frederick Peterson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    Acute hallucinatory melancholia is the form accompanied by numerous illusions and hallucinations. , . Hypochondriacal melancholia is melancholia associated with delusions as to physical maladies. . ifcrcis melancholicus is a phrase employed to describe the famous outbreaks of violence toward the patient himseli or others, «... the sudden cessation of mental and motor tension. _ Catotonic melancholia* already alluded to, is not a distinct type oJ mental disease, but simply a modification in the course oi melancholia. It has often been considered as a special form of psychosis, and many alienists have argued pro and con. the question of its being a clinical entity. It is a very rare syndrome. A perfectly typical case is the following, observed by me in the Hudson River State Hospital: Case I.—B. R., female; age thirty-one; married, with four children; Hebrew; common education; born in United States; admitted'to the Hudson River State Hospital in February, 1884 ; no heredity. . 1000 a. The first evidence of mental disturbance was m August, 18«d, alter the birth of her last child, which she nursed for two months, when she became sleepless, restless, and inclined to refuse food. Soon she devel- oped the idea that she would never recover, began to bemoan her con- dition, and said it was hard to die so young. There was complete anorexia. She took no interest in anything, became careless of her person and dress and negligent of everything in which she had formerly been interested. Three weeks before admission she became suicidal, spoke of it, and attempted to choke herself and to cut herself with glass. She would bite her caretakers, and took every means possible to make away with herself. Her menstruation was regular. There was con- siderable constipation. The case was regarded as one of puerperal melancholia- February 11th, two days after admission, she tried to beat her head against the bedstead ; said some one was killing her children and putting them in a box ; said arsenic was put in her coffee and that her mother was in the asylum; was sleepless and had to be fed_forcibly. She became rapidly worse during the next few days ; went into a condition of noisy excitement, calling for her mother, whom she believed to be in the building; mentioned her delusions of poisoning, beat and bruised herself against the bedstead, and refused all food. She was very suicidal. Her mouth and tongue became dry; she showed symptoms of exhaustion and was fed with the tube for a considerable period. She continued to refuse food, to resist all care strenuously, and to be desperately suicidal until March 15th, when she became cataleptic, with marked flexibilitas cerea; absolutely silent; noticing nothing, not even her husband, who visited her ; would swallow food put in her mouth ; made no voluntary motions ; pulse good ; bowels moved by enemata, but began to wet and soil the bed, and as she grew stronger was looked upon as rapidly be- coming demented. This state of catalepsy continued, with variations 1 Catatonia, by Frederick Peterson, M.D., and Charles H. Langdon, M.D., Proceedings of the imer. Medico-Psychological Assoc., Baltimore, 1897. 45