The disorders of speech : speech in its relations to insanity / by John Wyllie.

  • John Wyllie
Date:
[1893?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disorders of speech : speech in its relations to insanity / by John Wyllie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    movements are lively, sudden, uncertain. The movements and the gestures of maniacs, which appear every one more meaningless than another, are but the expression of the exaltation arid disorder of the ideas and emotions of these patients.”1 In Simple Mania the same characteristics are exhibited as in Acute Mania, but they are greatly toned down. There is inco- herence of speech and inconsistency of conduct, with comparatively mild exaltation and excitement. Here is what I got taken down from the mild delirium of a middle-aged woman in the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, who sat talking to herself quietly, and laughing occasionally :—“ You’re not dead yet. I’ll not get you. When I was in York Lane why did you not take the candidate I had then ? When you was in Seafield you would not say that to Robert. That beautiful face of thine. When I forget Spittal Street I’ll shine. If I’m no religious, can you lift it up in Spittal Street ? ” If the amount of thought that presumably suggested these sentences were put into the balance, it would evidently weigh as nothing in com- parison with the amount of speech produced. This suggests a very important question, viz., the question whether in such cases the speech centres are not to a large extent displaying restless activities of their own that are almost independent of the normal stimulus of thought. I shall refer again to this question in the next part of this paper. It is generally admitted that the condition of mania is more perilous to the mind than that of melancholia. Mania, more fre- quently than melancholia, causes the mind to sink into a stupor which is apt to be prolonged into permanent Dementia. Even in cases where there is apparent recovery, the patient has not often completely restored to him his former power of mind and fineness of sensibility. The edge has generally been taken off his intellect, and his affections also have been blunted. C. Monomania, Moral Insanity, etc.—I do not think it will be necessary to treat in this paper of the speech of patients suffer- ing from Monomania, Moral Insanity, or the other special forms of mental derangement. In fact, nothing could be said about the speech of such patients except that, as in melancholia and mania, it faithfully mirrors the mental condition of the patient. Rut it does so rather in the meaning of what is said than in the manner of saying it. There is one curious form of monomania, however, of special interest in connexion with speech, that I may be allowed to say a few words about. It is that in which the patient is under the delusion that, for some special reason, it is necessary that he should be absolutely and permanently taciturn. Such an indi- vidual, though generally insane, is not necessarily so. He may be under a religious vow never to utter a word. Thus we know that the Carthusian monks live in their monastery a life of perpetual taciturnity, and converse with each other solely by gestures and in 1 Esquirol, Maladies Mentalcs, vol. ii. p. 151,