The increase of insanity : the Lumleian lectures, 1907, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, London / by George Henry Savage.

  • George Savage
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The increase of insanity : the Lumleian lectures, 1907, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, London / by George Henry Savage. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    In America a similar experience has been recorded among the negroes, who before the Civil War rarely provided cases of general paralysis. Now these are common enough. In the last Scotch report general paralysis is stated to be increasing more rapidly in Edinburgh than in Glasgow. This seems hard to explain, but I am inclined to think this must depend on some difference in the diagnosis, many cases appearing as brain syphilis and not as simple general paralysis. The next group to which I call attention is in many ways important and interesting, particularly at the present time, when toxins are the favourite explanation of most morbid states. I would recall what Sutton said many years ago, that though there was doubtless much to be learnt from an observation of the relationship between micro-organisms and disease, yet, as effective causes, their importance might be over-estimated and their operation misunderstood, that just as we lived on, and aided by, them when healthy, so it was when we began to fail in any direction that the microbes were ready to prey on us. That mental disorder amounting to insanity may depend upon toxic influences is too well known to require much illustration on my part, yet it is perhaps worth while to note a few of the special forms of disorder which follow intoxications of one kind or another. First, then, there is generally a progressive affection begin- ning with the most highly specialised parts leading to defect in the last and most complex attainments, the con-
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