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.

    89/492 page 77
    of intellect, and wandering and dementia, or delirium or coma, such as you see in the wards here, and not insanity proper, such as I am more especially speaking of, which is treated in special asylums and institutions for the insane. Nevertheless, the presence of a tumour in any part within the cranial cavity may give rise to insanity, and in our autopsies of the insane we occasionally find such. We must conjecture that the derangement is caused by the sympathetic irritation of such foreign bodies rather than by their actual invasion of the parts concerned in mental operations. When the latter happens, we should expect dulness and imbecility, not insanity. We may also conjecture that in a patient in whom insanity is caused by a tumour, other pathological conditions exist favourable to the development; thus, of a woman who died at St Luke's Hospital, in whose right cere- bral hemisphere was found a tumour of the size of a pullet's egg, it is recorded that her sister was insane. In this case mania existed for two months, but before death there were noticed drowsiness, ptosis of the left eyelid, and loss of memory. Dr Clouston has recorded the particulars of six cases of tumour,* and the conclusions he draws are that the brain structure is affected in three different ways. They may cause an irritation of the neighbouring substance tend- ing to softening. They may cause pressure on distant parts, and so produce alterations in the nutrition. And, thirdly, they may set up in certain parts progressive disease and degeneration, the true nature of which is not yet well known. Its results pathologically are an increase of the connective-tissue in the form of granules and enlarge- ment and thickening of the coats of the vessels; but all these seem to be secondary changes. Dr Batty Tuke says that carcinoma produces the greatest perversion of psychical function, this being probably due to the great rapidity of its * Journ. Ment. Sci., July 1872.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3