Handbook of insanity for practitioners and students / by Theodore Kirchhoff.

Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of insanity for practitioners and students / by Theodore Kirchhoff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    II. CLASSIFICATION, IMPORTANCE, AND MODE OF ACTION OF THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. The causes of insanity are either direct and immediate, or indirect and predisposing. The latter favor the devel- opment of mental disturbances and produce a predisposi- tion to them. In the individual case it is often difficult to decide whether we have to deal with a sign of the dis- ease, i.e., with an effect of these causes, or with one of the causes themselves. Statistics furnish a great aid in the study of the causes of insanity, but they must be in- terpreted with caution. Different causes are so often combined in the same case that we are hardly ever justified in making a single one responsible for this or that effect. Hitherto all attempts at etiological classification of psychical diseases have failed on account of the numerous possibilities in each case, and also because an entire series of diseases would be left without a known cause. The term psychical trauma has been applied recently to constantly repeated injurious influences which may produce a permanent morbid condition in certain parts of the nervous system. It is interesting in this respect that, apart from distinct mental disorders, some of the lower functions which are closely related to emotional and men- tal activities during health may also be morbidly changed in the same way. These are symptoms such as palpita- tion, insomnia, nervous digestive disorders, laughing and crying spells—conditions which are apt to develop after continued injurious psychical influences. That these con- ditions are not morbid per se is evident, because, like redness of the face in anger, pallor in fright, they are