On common neuroses, or, The neurotic element in disease and its rational treatment.

  • Goodhart, James F. (James Frederic), Sir, 1845-1916.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On common neuroses, or, The neurotic element in disease and its rational treatment. 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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    whether this is put before them with all the blunt uncompromisingness and persistency that the occa- sion and their blindness in the matter require. Neurotic vomiting is another branch of the same subject, but I shall not discuss it, because it is so well recognised that it rarely fails to receive the appropriate treatment. There is, however, a group of cases in children of which I do not think much is known, so I shall deal with it a little more in detail. I allude to the sudden periodical paroxys- mal vomiting of extreme violence that is occasionally seen in children of four, five, and six years or so of age. It goes on for twenty-four, thirty-six, or forty- eight hours ; everything, often even water, is returned. The child becomes hollow-eyed and choleraic in appearance, and is, indeed, brought to the very verge of death. In a first attack of this kind it is not unnaturally supposed to be due to some error of diet, although it often puzzles the parents to say what that error may have been. It is of course an attack that may very well be set up by an irritant poison in the shape of food, or by ptomaines of one kind or another, but in these cases the irritant is for the most part trivial, and similar attacks tend to recur over and over again in the same child. Moreover, they always lead to the most rigid dieting, and yet the attacks recur. I have notes of six or eight such cases, and I cannot but think that the vomiting is of cerebral origin, and not gastritic. At any rate, I do