Insanity : its classification, diagnosis, and treatment; a manual for students and practitioners of medicine / by E. C. Spitzka.

  • Spitzka, E. C. (Edward Charles), 1852-1914.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity : its classification, diagnosis, and treatment; a manual for students and practitioners of medicine / by E. C. Spitzka. 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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    council of bishops in the same cavity, which after death re- vealed the same pathological condition. The common de- lusion that some one or other organ or member has been destroyed or petrified or turned to wood, cork, or glass, or is infested by noisome parasites or reptiles and maggots, is probably based on partial anaesthesias and paraesthesias. Here the delusion is as much in disproportion to the ex- citing cause as the idea of a dreaming person that he is falling down a great height is to the dropping of his arm over the side of the bed; or the dream pf Captain Parry, that he was standing upright with his feet frozen into the ice of Baffin's Bay, was to the fact that his feet were uncovered at the time he had this dream. Here, however, as elsewhere, the essential element is the cerebral fault (the logical failure to correct the delusion, with the weakening of the ego) that permits the development of this insane symptom. The visceral disease or the senso- rial disturbance is an accidental factor ; the patient would be insane with or without it, in the vast majority of in- stances; and in its absence his defective mind would fall a prey to some other delusion, under the assaults of some other incidental occurrence, which, equally with the visceral disorders alluded to, would fail to provoke delusions in a healthy brain. The superficial character of the delusions of the chronic insane, interesting as it is to the laity who visit the show- wards of an asylum,* is ordinarily of lesser value to the alienist, for reasons similar to the ones just assigned. When the fiend. Thomas, exploded a dynamite battery, killing over a hundred persons at Bremerhaven, a lunatic in a Ger- man institution developed the delusion that the clockwork of just such a battery occupied the place of his heart, and at a certain moment would explode the charge and destroy the asylum. When Nobiling shot at the German emperor over a dozen lunatics accused themselves of complicity, or offered to give information of alleged conspiracies which they had unearthed. When the Pope referred in his allo- cution to the Star which was to relieve the Church of its persecutors, more than one insane devotee thought he was the one referred to. Whenever a political movement, like * It was sufficiently evident to a lunatic described by Kiernan: that the grosser the delusion the greater the interest of the visitors, and the more likely their donations of tobacco, etc.; that he shammed having the delusion of tar and grease filling his head to accommodate them.