The influence of heredity on disease : with special reference to tuberculosis, cancer and diseases of the nervous system a discussion / opened by Sir William S. Church, Sir William R. Gowers, Arthur Latham and E.F. Bashford.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The influence of heredity on disease : with special reference to tuberculosis, cancer and diseases of the nervous system a discussion / opened by Sir William S. Church, Sir William R. Gowers, Arthur Latham and E.F. Bashford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    hereditary syphilis. In every juvenile general paralytic case I have investigated I have obtained a history which is conformable with con- genital syphilis. The question why general paralytics so seldom exhibit signs of syphilis on the body is one of great interest, and I think it shows that when syphilis affects a whole race there is acquired a wide- spread tendency to immunity, but that it is at the expense of the cells of the body throwing out antibodies to neutralize the effect of the syphilitic virus, liecent investigations of Wassermann and others, who have found antibodies in the cerebrospinal fluid and blood-serum of general paralytics in practically nearly every case, suggests that the nervous system undergoes decay and wears itself out in throwing out these antibodies to neutralize the effect of the conditions produced by the virus of syphilis. Another very important matter which arises from these researches, and in regard to which I hope soon to give more precise data, is the relation of tuberculosis to insanity. It seems to me that tuberculosis is not acquired in asylums to such an extent as is commonly believed. I have gone into this point fully; it is a question of the soil and the seed, and I am not sure that the soil is not just as important as the seed. Patients admitted to asylums are of low vitality ; they readily acquire tuberculosis; and the onset of tuberculosis may coincide with the deve- lopment of the insanity, both being due to a depression of the vital functions of the body; only in the insane, as distinguished from the sane, the brain shares in the nutritional failure. I have records of more than ‘2,000 consecutive necropsies, and I find that in the first three or four decades certain types of insanity are parti- cularly prone to tuberculosis—e.g., adolescent insanity, melancholia, and imbecility. I do not think there is a tuberculous insanity, as Professor Clouston used to teach, but I believe there is a soil which leads to the easy development of the tubercle organism. The subjects become melancholic and stuporose, so that you can understand that it may be difficult to diagnose the disease by the physical signs. The tubercular incidence at the same ages is from ten to fifteen times as great inside asylurfis as it is outside. Comparison op Tubercle Death-rates per 1,000 living, Sane and Insane. 15 to 19 jears, insane 17 times as great as sane 20 „ 24' „ y y 14 y y 25 „ 34 „ y y 13 y y •35 „ 44 „ y y 6 y y 45 „ 54 „ y y 2 y y 55 „ G4 ,, y y 3 y y 65 years and over y y 4 y y > 5 y y Total average ... 8