General paralysis : a critical review of the literature of the subject, to which is appended an analysis of the case of John S. Blackburn, in which insanity was alleged as a means of defense / by D.A. Morse.
- Morse, D. A. (David Appleton), 1840-1891
- Date:
- [1874]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: General paralysis : a critical review of the literature of the subject, to which is appended an analysis of the case of John S. Blackburn, in which insanity was alleged as a means of defense / by D.A. Morse. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![existence of dementia. This we fully discuss when we considci' the nature and pathology of the disease. Esquirol divides demency into acute, or .chronic, simple 01 complicated, continued, remittent or intermittent. On page iiii, xo]. u, maladies fiieidales, he says: demency may co-exist with lypemania, mania-, epilepsy, convulsions, scorbutus, a7id above all with parah/.sis. Complicated demency is incurable. * * * The complication of mental diseases, with lesions of movement, resists all curative means and leaves no hope of long duration of life. These facts I declare, which we also read in the Nyoi'ks of Calmeil, Bayle, Guislain, &c., confirm too well this mournful truth. The first I called attention to this phenomena, 1805, I showed the incurability of insanity com- plicated with paralysis. TJm paralyms is oftev i the sign of a (ihronic inflammation of the inenincjea, and ought not to be con- founded with paralysis, consecutive to cerebral 'hemorrhages, cancers, tubercles, softening of the brain. It shoios itself some times with, the first symptoms of delirimn, during the acute period so remarkable at the onset (debut) of almost all forms of insan- ity. Sometimes it precedes the delirium, sometimes ii. comes as a kind of adjunct to it. At fi.rst it is partial, then it invades a great number of muscles and becomes general. Esquirol seems to have overlooked the fact that the patho- logical changes induced both the mental and physical phenomena. The study of insanity from a physiological, Jind anatomico- pathological standpoiTit, as well as metaphysical, guards against these errors so conunon with early writers who regarded only mental phenomena in studying insanity, and based their classi- fications upon the predominant features of these phenomena, leaving pathological conditions and physical symptoms unam- sidered, or to be explained on separate principles. That E^squirol thus erred, no one can, with the light of the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22279167_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
