Statistics of insanity in Grahamstown Asylum / by T. Duncan Greenlees.

  • Greenlees, T. Duncan.
Date:
[1905]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Statistics of insanity in Grahamstown Asylum / by T. Duncan Greenlees. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    disease, characterised by depression rather than by excitement,—melancholia rather than mania, for it has been recently recognised that the higher the intellectual development the greater is the tendency to states of depression when insanity appears ; and in this connec¬ tion I pointed out some 11 years ago the prevalence of maniacal conditions, and the comparative rarity of melancholia, among the Natives of this country. To answer this question I have reviewed the coloured admissions each year from 1890 to 1904 inclusive, classifying them into cases of mania and melancholia. In all 1,131 Natives were admitted ; of these 684, or 604 per cent, suffered from mania on admission, and 128, or 11*3 per cent, from melancholia. During the first quinquennial period the proportions were respec¬ tively 605 per cent, and 12*8 per cent.; during the second quinquennial period they were 68,0 per cent, and 8’6 per cent, and during the last five years they were 54*0 per cent, and 12*3 per cent. The conclusion arrived at from these statistics is that civilisation has not advanced, during these years, to such an extent • as to materially influence the type of insanity among the Native races of this country. With respect to general paralysis among the Natives, I find it is an extremely rare, if not unknown, disease with the pure unsophisticated savage ; and this although syphilis is by no means uncommon. It is only when the Native has been long in contact with the white man, learning his bad, rather than his good, charac¬ teristics, that general paralysis affects him; it would seem as if alcohol plus syphilis accomplishes in the Native what syphilis alone may do in the white man. The analogue to general paralysis in the Native is “ Organic Dementia,’' where the mental symptoms are from the first those of dementia, and the motor symptoms, as well as the pathology of the disease, resemble general paralysis. With respect to epilepsy, as a disease occurring outside Asylums, the Director of the Census of 1891 noted it was more prevalent among the white class than among the coloured population, and that the average education of epileptics was distinctly higher than that of the population as a whole. In Grahamstown Asylum 55 Europeans and 56 Natives were noted to suffer from “ Acquired Epilepsy ” on admission, being 5-6 per cent, and 4-9 per cent, respectively of the totals.