A treatise on the nature, symptoms, causes, and treatment of insanity : with practical observations on lunatic asylums and a description of the Pauper Lunatic Asylum for the county of Middlesex, at Hanwell.

  • Ellis, William Charles, Sir, 1780-1839.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the nature, symptoms, causes, and treatment of insanity : with practical observations on lunatic asylums and a description of the Pauper Lunatic Asylum for the county of Middlesex, at Hanwell. 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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    The bodily symptoms, which occur so frequently in insanity as really to deserve to be considered as characteristics of the disease, are very few. The unhealthy action in the brain and its membranes is visible, rather from the alteration in the mental mani- festations, than from any uniform corporeal change. In the early stages it is usually marked by irregularity of the secretions, yet it often happens, even in this stage, that, after it has continued for a short time, no alteration whatever takes place in the pulse, and all the secretions appear to be healthy. This is particularly the case where the symptoms denote only a small portion of the brain to be diseased, and where this disease has come on very gradually, the nervous system seeming to accommodate itself to the change, without being so irritated as to disturb the functions of the other parts of the body. And when the derangement has become chronic, it is a well-known fact, that many of the patients, for years together, enjoy excellent bodily health, and exhibit no marks of disease except mental delusions. It is probably this circumstance, which has led to the erroneous notion that medicine is of no use in all cases of insanity. It is singular that this uniformly good bodily health is rarely found, except in those cases where the hallucinations of the patient are confined to one subject. Where the unhealthy action of the brain and nervous system has been so great as to produce deranged manifestation in the faculties generally, K