Sixth annual report of the Inverness District Lunatic Asylum : May 1870.

  • Inverness District Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sixth annual report of the Inverness District Lunatic Asylum : May 1870. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    possible to detect, at last, roused to indignation by doubts as to his superiority to those around, announced himself a prophet, and in proof of the truth of his assertion, fasted for a week to show he could live by faith, and was ministered to by unseen hands. In direct contrast to the cases now referred to, are those in which the appetite is excessive or depraved. Both of these classes are principally found amongst maniacs and dements, and in the first of these it may depend on several causes—1st, From the feel¬ ing of exhaustion induced by their violent gesticulations and inces¬ sant restlessness, so prominent a feature of their disease ; 2d, That in their excitement the feeling of satiety is lost; 3d, That in some there may arise that excessive feeling of gratification which is so keenly appreciated by many temperaments ; 4th, It is well known that habitual indulgence in large meals increases the desire for in¬ dulgence ; and 5th, it may depend upon actual disease, and the never-satisfied craving of hunger felt in many morbid conditions of the system. In dements, whilst this insatiable desire for food very frequently depends upon other causes and actual disease, it is principally due to the blunting of the very strongest, as it is the lowest, of our sensations—hunger—and the incapability on their part either of recognising this feeling or of appreciating the feeling of its satisfaction. In intimate connection with this subject are the perversions of the sense of taste, which often leads the insane to partake of the most disgusting substances. This perversion is observed in its minor and simpler forms in hysterical subjects, and in certain conditions of the system in which the impulse to par¬ take of certain articles is often perfectly irresistible. It would be impossible to illustrate here fully the various forms under which this symptom appears; but it may be stated that two women at present in the Asylum voluntarily eat nothing but stale bread; one man has to be kept in the house from his propensity to indulge in tar, accessible to him at the gas-house; another man, if not pre¬ vented, prefers to carry his food about with him for a few days next his skin, before using it; and two men, unless watched, select fragments from the refuse collected for the pigs, and conceal it until after it is decayed. Associated either with excessive indulgence in, or abstinence from food, may be very briefly mentioned the peculiar manner in which some patients partake of it. Thus, one man only does sp
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