Insanity and its treatment : lectures on the treatment, medical and legal, of insane patients / by G. Fielding Blandford.

  • George Fielding Blandford
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity and its treatment : lectures on the treatment, medical and legal, of insane patients / by G. Fielding Blandford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stration or argument. When the feeling subsides—the feeling of depression, or the excitement and elation which cause the grand and exalted fancies of some—the ideas in the majority of cases vanish also, especially if no long time has elapsed. The patient is said to have lost his delusions, and their gradual disappearance or occasional reappearance coincides markedly with the restoration of the general health and strength, of sleep, digestion, uterine or other functions. But it sometimes happens that the delusions remain after the feelings have gone, and we behold in the patient a confirmed monomaniac. The ideas which were at first the explanation to the patient of his altered sensations are stored up as facts of experience in a damaged brain, which never recovers from the injury it has received, and never resumes its entire work- ing power; remaining permanently unable by means of one part to correct the false notions of another, it retains for ever the dream that arose in its half-waking period. The delusions most frequently met with amongst the insane may be arranged in comparatively a small number of classes. All, as I have said, are connected with self— the selfhood of the patient; all are supposed to indicate some change that has taken place with regard to himself. There is a change for better or worse; a change affecting his worldly or spiritual interests, his bodily condition or his surroundings; a change which has already happened, is happening, or is about to happen at some future time. The extravagance of the ideas will depend on the amount of brain-disorder, and we may often see this marked out by the delusions, as it rises to its climax, and then falls again to where it began. The delusions presented by a patient who thinks that things are amiss with him, may be connected, as De]lIsions I have said, with his worldly or his spiritual most coin- interests. In the extreme melancholic condition monly found- which accompanies excessive depression and prostration of L
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