Endemic degeneration / by W.A.F. Browne.

  • William A. F. Browne
Date:
[1861?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Endemic degeneration / by W.A.F. Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    life, of departure from the simplicity of primitive usages, or of the cumulative effect of ages of barbarism, oppression, toil, poverty, etiolation, it may be, were difficult to say. Many stunted and grotesque individuals have been recently seen and examined in relation to this subject. The majority were posi¬ tively idiotic, or of dull, weak intellect and blunted sensibility. In several, even when they were not of bilious temperament, the colour differed much from that of health. Yellow was the predominating tinge ; but in one, four feet three inches and a half in height, with square, flat face, batrachian features, and who vacillated, spoke with great difficulty, but who was not imbecile, it was dusky, and in some spots so dark that she is generally supposed to be a mulatto.* She is a cretin in all but mind. The stationary population of poor- houses afford many examples of this class. These cases, and others of which I possess the history, appear to justify the supposition that the morbid conditions, of which brief sketches have been introduced, may run into, or be connected with each other, by intermediate modifications, partaking of the charac¬ teristics of the different species. Tor example, in the MY there are the large, irregular head, the tumid belly, the feebleness of the extremities, the livid visage, and many of the mental manifestations of cretinism, but no enlargement of the thyroid gland; there is great distortion, as in rickets, but conjoined with idiocy; there is disease of the skin, as in pellagra and ichthyosis, but it is perma¬ nent and congenital; and there is cachexia, but unattended by gastro-enteritis. There are some interesting psychical phenomena manifested by the group. There is the entire isolation of two, the mute, motion¬ less, passive solitude, which has no relations, no past, no future; yet, as I have repeatedly observed in similar groups, and especially in a family of seven imbeciles, five brothers and two sisters, recently examined, while they have little or no articulate language, and use no signs, or rarely attempt intercourse with the other members of the household, they are believed to have occasional, though rare, communion with each other. In general the mode is a jargon, here it must be by looks. Mentally they must live in the perpetual monotony of two or three impressions; the range of their “not me” must, at all events, be very limited. They do not know light from darkness, heat from cold; whether a psychical peculiarity, or con¬ nected with the supply of chlorides from the air or their food, they either do not take salt, or take it in small quantities, and only, it would appear, because it is presented to them; like certain classes of idiots, they appear to be exempt from the majority of the exanthe- * Vide a very interesting communication, by my friend Dr. Laycock, on Cu¬ taneous Discoloration, in the ‘ Brit, and For. Medico-Chirurgical Review/ No. 53, January, 1861.