Diseased cravings and paralysed control : dipsomania, morphinomania, chloralism, cocainism / by T.S. Clouston.

  • Clouston, T. S. (Thomas Smith), 1840-1915.
Date:
[1890]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseased cravings and paralysed control : dipsomania, morphinomania, chloralism, cocainism / by T.S. Clouston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    overlap, and we come on some cases that will not fit into any of the four pigeon-holes. 1. Under the developmental and retrogressive form I would include the congenital cases whose higher inhibition had never been developed as a brain faculty ; the cases arising at puberty and during adolescence, a numerous and an unfavourable class; those occur- ring at the climacteric, a not uncommon kind in both sexes, but especially in women; anti the senile class, also not rare. The general features of the congenital class of dipsomaniacs are a slight weakness of mind, inhibitorily in all directions, impulsive- ness, lack of moral sense, want of balance, keen unreasoning likes and dislikes, want of power of application, want of common sense, and distorted and often remarkable social instincts. With all these lacks there may be a certain intellectual acuteness and pre- cocity, and much cunning. I assume that the intellectual and other weaknesses do not go down to the standard of technical in- sanity. There may be educability if the proper methods are adopted. From early childhood an impartial study of such children will detect these deficiencies. They are usually of neurotic parentage or of a drunken family, and are in fact one variety of the class of “moral idiots” or imbeciles. The drink craving arises at any time, and usually suddenly after the first taste of alcohol, the effect of which on such brains is intensely pleasurable. Alcohol has a special affinity for all nervous tissue, but it seems to have a very special affinity for such brains, while out of it comes excite- ment, drunkenness, outrage, and crime. The craving I have seen developed at ten years of age, and even earlier. There are, of course, great varieties in different cases, but the following presented the main features of the disease with sufficient distinctiveness:— A. B., aged 12, was seen by me on account of the following symptoms. His mother was a very unstable woman, and the father drank hard and came of a drunken family. The boy had been slightly peculiar, impulsive, and difficult to manage from a baby. He had been taught the ordinary branches at school, and could read and write, but was backward somewhat. Especially he had no depth of moral nature or of resistive volition. The body was large enough, but the movements were not so quick and fully co-ordinated as to be graceful. The head was badly shaped, the palate arch very high, and the eyes restless. It was difficult to fix his attention for any time on anything, and he was a good deal of an automaton mentally, but anything like idiocy or congenital imbecility had never been thought of. About a year before I saw him some whisky had been given him, it was not known exactly how, but ever since that first taste the craving for it had been present. He stuck at nothing to gratify it. Lying and stealing he would practise at any time to get a little of the coveted stimulant. He invented wonderful stories of illnesses at home, for which whisky was needed at once, messages from his mother to the family