Mental diseases / by Frederick Peterson.

  • Peterson, Frederick, 1859-1938.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mental diseases / by Frederick Peterson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    Incoherence of ideas Leads to a dissociation also in the motor ex- pressions of ideas, parapraxia, paramimia, incoordination, pseudo-ataxia, incoherent agitation, chorea magna, and jactitation. Such motor agita- tion may be primary or may be the secondary result of innumerable clashing hallucinations and delusions, rapidity of the flight of ideas or of intellectual defects. Grandiose delusions exert their own peculiar influence on the demeanor and speech of the patient, according to the contents of the exalted ideas. We observe the proud bearing ; the self-sufficient, haughty, or secret smile ; the withdrawing from others ; the tendency to decoration of the person ; the attempts to act the parts of the personage he imagines himself to be; the striking peculiarities of handwriting. In some instances delusions of grandeur lead to homicidal, rarely suicidal, attempts (self-crucifixion with the delusion of being Christ). Grandiose erotic ideas sometimes occasion masturbation. Coprophagy and other filthy habits may depend upon grandiose delusions as to extraordinary virtues of the patient's excretions. In depressed delusions, particularly as regards ideas of sin and poverty, we observe the characteristic melancholy facial expression and attitudes. Attempts at suicide are frequent, and sometimes self-mutilation. Abstention from food is especially common with the delusion of poverty, the patient feeling that he can not pay for anything. Hypochondriacal ideas influence markedly the patient's actions and conduct. The hypochondriac may neglect every duty in the constant contemplation of his symptoms. He reads medical books, goes from one physician to another, takes to his bed perhaps permanently, and so on. The effects of hypochondriasis on motor functions are frequently remarkable, leading sometimes to astasia or abasia, or both ; to hypo- chondriacal ataxia, tremor, or convulsive movements of the extremities. These hypochondriacal motor conditions are always the result of a series of morbid judgments on a hypochondriacal basis, and are to be distin- guished from similar hysterical states which have an autochthonous origin without any antecedent conscious reasoning process. The persecutory delusions lead to systems of self-protection of the most varied kind. Barricades, stopping up of cracks and keyholes, the wearing of peculiar clothing (silk, paper, etc., for instance, as a guard against electrical shocks), avoiding of food and drink which are suspected of containing poison, arming with weapons, frequent change of servants or residence, and complaints to the police or judicial authorities. Homicide is common in these cases. Imperative ideas lead to imperative movements and actions, and generally in spite of the well-preserved consciousness and judgment of the patient. Such imperative actions are as various in character as the imperative ideas to which they correspond.1 Accompanying Physical Disorders in Insanity.—Among the 1 The foregoing account of the psychopathology of insanity is largely a presenta- tion of the views of Ziehen, to whose excellent work the author must refer readers for greater detail.