Institutions for the insane, in Prussia, Austria and Germany.

  • Pliny Earle
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Institutions for the insane, in Prussia, Austria and Germany. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Dr. Augustus Focke, the Second Physician, though still quite young, appears to combine an excellent judge- ment with extensive erudition in the branch of the pro- fession to which he is devoted. He has not only visited all the principal hospitals for the insane throughout the countries in which the German language is spoken, but has passed five months in some of the best of similar in- stitutions in Great Britain. He speaks English with flu- ency, and lam indebted to him for much information, both of fact and opinion. A portion of this is embodied below. The German physicians study mental diseases very thoroughly and minutely. At Siegburg, a consultation of all the physicians of the institution is held upon every case, soon after admission, and as frequently, afterwards, as circumstances require. Local bleeding upon the back of the neck is occasionally prescribed, and sometimes, though rarely, the head is shaved and cups applied to the scalp. Mania frequently originates in, or is accom- panied by debility, and venesection is consequently, as a general rule, injurious. Those physicians who bleed in these cases kill their patients. The warm bath is pre- ferable to the cold in mania, but the reverse obtains in melancholia. The cold plunge-bath is useful in the latter, but injurious in the former. Some physicians give too much medicine in mental disorders. They appear to regard the stomach as a kind of post-office, for the de- posite of missives directed to each and every organ of the body. The miasma of the country around Siegburg produces much intermittent fever. It causes some cases of insanity, but cures many. A few cases of paralysie generate have so far recovered, at this institution, as to be able to return to their homes,
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