The disorders of speech.

  • Wyllie, John, 1914-
Date:
1894
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disorders of speech. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    meaning, can be detected. Among this assembly of people deprived by insanity of their mental faculties, are usually a few who owe the deprivation to the disease known as General Paralysis of the Insane. In these cases, the terrible disease of which they are the subjects will soon destroy life itself. In this day-room the wrecks left by most of the various severer forms of insanity will be found collected together. Some have been Melancholic; a larger number have been Maniacal; others are Epileptic; others have been Alcoholic; some are cases of Senile Dementia; and others are the subjects of General Paralysis of the Insane. The hopeless condition of Secondary Dementia may be the consequence of any one of the graver forms of insanity. It is among these patients with dementia that the Keflex and Automatic forms of speech already described are so often met with. Echolalia is common among them, especially when dementia is far advanced. The reflex speech exhibited in the giving of Con- ventional Eeplies to conventional questions is also often met with. Their automatic maundering Monologues have already been described: in some of the cases of advanced dementia to be pre- sently noted, these monologues will be found to have become so degenerate as to have lost all resemblance to words, and be comparable only to the babbling of infants. Even in patients, however, in whom the monologues have been reduced to mere babbling, it is very striking to find that if by any means the attention can be roused, and the patient got to reply to a question, he will reply to it in words whose articulation is prac- tically perfect. I am, of course, speaking now of cases where the dementia is pure, and not complicated by motor paralysis. The speech-centres thus evidently retain their store of verbal images, even for many years after the mental faculties have almost ceased to employ them. A. Cases of Simple Dementia without Motor Paralysis.— When treating, in the fifth chapter, of the Speech of Imbecile Children, I gave, from notes taken at the Larbert Institution, a series of cases showing a gradual ascent in intelligence and speech-power, from mental zero up to an almost normal level of intelligence. These were cases of Amentia, in which mental Development was more or less incomplete. In dealing now with