Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    272/356 (page 236)
    morose, surly, irritable, and quarrelsome; others exhibit great dulness of conception, enfeebled memory, confusion of ideas—in fact, a physical and mental dulness or torpor j others, on the other hand, display an unwonted gaiety, loquacity, and self-confidence, which contrast strangely with their usual dull and apathetic state. It has been pointed out by Falret that in some cases the same ideas, the same recollections, or the same hallucina- tions recur before the attack; that on each occasion the person has the same vivid mental impression, or sees the same spectral illusions, or smells the same odour, or hears the same voice uttering the same words; and it is curious enough that the recurring idea or image is sometimes a reproduction of that which went before, and perhaps pro- voked, the first attacks. We may liken it to the strange sensation which, occurring in some part of the body im- mediately before the loss of consciousness and the con- vulsions, is known as the aura epileptica. It is certain, then, that there are in many cases of epilepsy mental dis- turbances which, though we may call them prodromata, are really a part of the attack; and it is not a little strange, having regard to these and similar facts, that any one should ever have placed the morbid seat of epilepsy in the central or in the lower ganglia of the brain. The ordinary epileptic loses consciousness before he falls- down in convulsions; it would therefore seem that his supreme cerebral centres are in trouble before the storm affects the lower centres. 2. It is well known that there are some attacks of epi- lepsy which may be described as abortive or incomplete.