Clinical manual of mental diseases : for practitioners and students / by A. Campbell Clark.

  • Clark, Archibald Campbell, 1851-1901.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical manual of mental diseases : for practitioners and students / by A. Campbell Clark. 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.

    176/518 (page 164)
    pression or stupor between. Do not despair of such cases, feed them well, get up their body-weight, increase their sleep by work or exercise in the open air, or even by the exhibition of bromide of potassium with tincture of cannabis indica. This treatment in recurrent cases, especially at the climac- teric, I have often found beneficial. I am strongly averse to narcotic drugs in acute cases, and regard it as absolutely necessary that they should be pushed very cautiously as long as there is a reasonable hope of cure by other means. It is believed that some cases have been made chronic and incurable by the indiscriminate use of narcotics and seda- tives, and I make a point of giving nature every chance for awhile, and only employing such drugs in emergencies and as a last resort. Clinical Illustrations. /. Acute Mania, Heredity, Loss of Child, Religious Excitement, Maniacal A Hack, Constipation, Quick Recovery. John M., hereditary history, married, ast. 34, insane three days, but attack has been threatening for a week. Lost a little girl, his pet child, six weeks previously. Being very sensitive, he felt this most keenly, and went off his sleep. By-and-by the religious consolations common at such times began to take effect on him, and many well-meaning but injudicious friends overdosed him with religious literature ; his mind endeavoured to tackle abstruse problems, and one in par- ticular, ' the second coming.' The first thing that his wife noticed actually wrong was his getting up at 4 a.m., putting on his clothes, and dressing with his usual care. She called out to him, ' Where are you going, John ?' but he seemed unconscious, as if in a dream, and left the room. She hurriedly got up, but he was too fast for her. He got out of the house, went with great speed to a house on the other side of the river, singing (or rather shouting) hymns, and fell at the door of the house. The man of the house brought him back home, and on the way asked him what would have happened if the bridge across the river had been open. ' Oh,' he replied, ' I felt that I could have flown over the river.'