A practical manual of mental medicine / by E. Régis ; with a preface by M. Benjamin Ball ; authorised translation by H.M. Bannister.
- Date:
- 1895
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A practical manual of mental medicine / by E. Régis ; with a preface by M. Benjamin Ball ; authorised translation by H.M. Bannister. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
32/716 page 12
![and melancholia. He considered melancholia as a mental depression with concentration of thought on one fixed idea, without fever: Melancholia in una re aliqua est lapsus, constante iji reliquis judicio. Animi angorinuna cogitatione di fixus atque inhoer- ens, absque febi-e et furore a phantasmate melan- colieo ortus. It was, therefore, according to him, a circumscribed insanity with limited delusion, in which respect it was different from mania, which he con- sidered to be a generalized disorder of the intelli- gence. Aretaeus described melancholia at length and very clearly, and noted especially the bodily symptoms, such as constipation, scantiness of urine, eructations, fetor of the breath, sniallness of the pulse, etc. As regards mania, he considered it, as has already been said, as a general continuous insanity, without fever, and he distinguished it from the toxic delirium produced by wine, mandragora and hyoscyamus by the fact that these latter have a sudden onset and equally sudden disappearance, while mania is stable and permanent. In his descri))tion of mania he notes the mental exaltation which in some patients quickens the faculties of memory and imagination so that they converse on astronomy and philosophy and compose poetiy a])parently beyond their normal ability. Aretaeus shows in a number of ])laces in his writings that melancholia is a commencement or a species of demi-mania, and that on the other hand](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21963009_0032.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
