A monograph on mental unsoundness / By Francis Wharton.

  • Wharton, Francis, 1820-1889.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A monograph on mental unsoundness / By Francis Wharton. 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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    but did not make known his position. He packed a bundle of neces- sary clothes, put in his pocket whatever money and trinkets he pos- sessed, and wandered about the country without aim or object. Every one lost sight of him for two or three months, when he was found in a remote part of the kingdom literally dead on a dunghill, where it is supposed he had laid himself down for warmth; his money was gone, and from the state of the stomach and intestines, it is probable that he had died of want of food as the immediate cause, but on examining the interior of the skull, there was found extensive softening and disorgani- zation of the left cerebrum, and the other was not free from disease. He could not have lived long; though, under proper care, the disease would not have been immediately fatal. (A) A diminution of sensibility, says M. Falret, in his late work,[i) is not of common occurrence in mental diseases, its exaltation being much more frequent. It is proper, however, to state that deranged persons are generally as sensible of temperature and impressions as persons ordi- narily are. Lesions of the sensibility, however, are observable in all kinds of insanity, and especially in those cases in which mystical ideas are predominant, in demonomania and paralytic insanity. General insensibility has been known to take away from some madmen the sense of their own existence. M. de Foville cites the example of a man who thought he had died at the battle of Austerlitz, at which he received a severe wound. His insanity consisted in his inability to recognize and feel his own body. When any one inquired after his health, it was customary for him to reply, You ask me how father Lambert is ? but father Lambert is no more, he was killed by a bullet at Austerlitz. That which you see here, is not him, but a machine which they have made to resemble him, and which is very badly made, so try and make another. Never, in speaking of himself, did he say me, (moi,) but that, (cela.) This man fell several times into a complete state of immobility and insensibility, which lasted several days. Sinapisms and blisters applied to guard against these accidents, never produced the least symptom of pain. He often refused to eat, say- ing : 9a n'avait point de ventre. Eaquirol was unable to discover any sign of pain in passing a pin through the skin of the arm of a demonomaniac, who asserted that he no more felt anything, and who imagined that his body had been car- ried away by the devil. , In regard to anomalies of general sensibility associated with no illu- sion, there are madmen who appear insensible to the ordinary causes of pain. Esquirol speaks of an idiot girl who was in the habit of scratching a lump she had upon her cheek, and did not stop until she had perforated it, and after having performed this perforation, she enlarged the wound by continually pulling at it with her finder. We have often seen deranged persons cut themselves in different parts of (Ji) Generally of all the causes of mental alienation, the most frequent, without doubt are cerebral affections or some alteration of the encephalic organ, and perhaps we should agree with Haslam in saying, that the primitive cause of mental derangement is always to be found in these alterations.-—J. Briand, Mid. Lig., p. 544. Paris, 1852. (/) Legons Cliniques de 1'Alienation Mentale, par M. Falret. Septieme lecon p 185 Paris, 1854. '