The prevention of insanity and the early and proper treatment of the insane / by Dr. Putnam Jacobi, Prof. Harris, Dr. Cleaves and others.

  • Jacobi, Mary Putnam, 1842-1906.
Date:
1882
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The prevention of insanity and the early and proper treatment of the insane / by Dr. Putnam Jacobi, Prof. Harris, Dr. Cleaves and others. 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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    A DISCUSSION OF INSANITY. The evening of Wednesday, September 7, at the Saratoga Social Science Congress of 1881, was occupied with a discussion of Insanity in its general aspects, at which Mr. DormauB. Eaton, of New York, presided ; the principal feature of the discussion being a Paper by Dr. Jacobi, which was read in her absence, by Dr. Edward C. Seguin, of New York. Prof. Harris, Chairman of the Department of Education, Dr. Channing, Chairman of the Health Department, Dr. Seguin, Mr. F. B. Sanborn, and others spoke in the debate, and an abstract of what they said is given below. Dr. Jacobi's Paper. Some Considerations on the Moral, and on the Non-Asylum Treatment of Insanity. BY MKS. MART PUTNAM JACOBI, M. D., OP NEW YORK. Read Wednesday Evening, September 7,1881. The two branches of my subject indicated in its title, are in no opposition to each other. It is conceivable that moral treatment should be carried out at our asylum ; it is advised; nay, nearly all the special advantages offered by asylums constitute so many elements of moral treatment. There is, says Kratft Ebing, no longer any room for the question, whether the therapeutics of insanity should be exclusively somatic or psychic. The knowl- edge that all mental phenomena are functions of the brain, indi- cates to us to try to affect the morbid psychic life through all psychical influences, — through the systematic awakening of feel- ings, conceptions, and impulses ; and the experience that anatom- ical processes in the brain lie at the basis of insanity, commands all our efforts to remove the disturbance of the cerebral functions by means of physical medication. In the equal estimation of somatic and psychic treatment, and in the strenuous necessity for their combination, is to be found the fundamental law in the the- rapeutics of the psychoses. Another reason may be added to those mentioned by Krafft Ebing for this duplex therapeutics. It is that the cause of an attack of insanity may be either moral or physical, or, much more frequently, both combined. The relative predominance of the somatic or pyschic element in the treatment of any given case, must correspond to that in its etiology.