Mental affections : an introduction to the study of insanity / by John Macpherson.
- Macpherson, John, 1857-1942
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Mental affections : an introduction to the study of insanity / by John Macpherson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.
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![Rheumatism is one of the most widely spread and best observed diseases in Europe. Acute articular rheumatism, which is the clinical type of all rheumatic affections, is ad- mittedly hereditary in the sense that the descendants of those afifected by it show an undoubted predisposition to contract it, and manifest a degeneracy which is well known as identical with the arthritic diathesis. The tendency of the affection to recur at a particular age, the liability to repeated acute attacks in the same individual, and the fact that many joints suffer simultaneously and in succession, point to the constitu- tional nature of the affection. But we believe (so far as a yet undemonstrated theory can assure us) that for the production of acute rheumatism it is necessary that a poison should be introduced from without; also that there should exist a special fitness in the tissues of the motor apparatus of the body for the growth of the malarial poison. We are on these grounds forced to the conclusion that the origin of the rheumatic degeneration depends primarily upon a form of miasmatic infection. Such a conclusion may ap];)ear connnonplace, but when we consider the neurotic affinities of rheumatismal de- generation it assumes gigantic and far-reaching proportions. The relation of chorea to rheumatism has now been fully accepted by all modern writers on nervous affections. Its relations with hysteria are also very frequent, hysterical patients being related to or descended from rheumatics in a proportion so considerable as to make the fact more than remarkable. A rheumatic joint is often the starting- point of an hysterical attack, and the subjects of hysteria are strongly predisposed to rheumatism. The combination of rheumatism and epilepsy has been referred to by many writers, e.g. Fere.^ Rheumatic affections of the nervous system, especially of the brain, are almost exclusively con- fined to persons who manifest a predisposition towards the neuro-arthritic diathesis. One might finally call into evidence the very large proportion of cardiac valvular lesions found among the insane, as well as the mental manifestations of ordinary cardiac disease. Both these questions, notwith- standing their great a^tiological importance, remain practically Fere, La Famille NcvroiMthique, p. 136.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21445060_0030.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
