Insanity / by G. Fielding.

  • Blandford, G. Fielding (George Fielding), 1829-1911
Date:
1897?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity / by G. Fielding. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the form of acute insanity just mentioned. The symptoms are quite different from the melancholia with suspicion, which characterizes s n, And tliev differ on the other hand from acute mania in that they commonly last only a few days, the whole dis- order running its course in about a week and terminating in death or recovery in that period of time. It is manifest that this insanity is due to the action of the alcoholic poison upon the brain, but what are the structures or tissues affected thereby ? The researches of Bevan Lewis, Andriezen, and others have been directed to the morbid anatomy of chronic alcoholism and the changes produced by long- continued drinking, but these are not the conditions of the brain in delirium tremens. In this disorder a patient is one day violently de- lirious with delusions and hallucinations of many kinds; he has had no sleep for days, and there is great fear that he will die. Yet sleep comes; either because the poison is eliminating or through the agency of drugs he sleeps many hours and awakes sane, every trace of the insanity having vanished. It is clear that some tissue of the brain is poisoned by the alcohol, and that when the latter is got rid of the brain function is restored. I recollect a very successful practi- tioner who used to treat delirium tremens by brisk purgation in order to get rid of the poison, and his patients certainly did well. The acute symptoms indicate here, as in acute delirium, active hypermmia and excessive vascular action as evidenced by the total want of sleep, and it appears likely that the tissues paralyzed are the vasomotor which control the cerebral vessels; about them we at present know little, but they are probably the nerve cells themselves which regulate the blood supply of the cortex. Insanity from other Poisons. Indian Hemp, Hasheesh, or Bhang.—This is a fertile source of in- sanity in the East or wherever Orientals are gathered together. The drug is enjoyed in various ways, either by being smoked or taken into the stomach. When I was lately in the island of Trinidad, where there is a large coolie population, I found that none could be im- ported nor the plant grown under heavy penalties. The last report on the subject is from Dr. Warnock, the superintendent of the asy- lum at Cairo, who says that of 253 admissions in the latter half of 1895, 40 were put down to the abuse of hasheesh and 40 more to the combined effect, of this drug and alcohol. Of 80 cases only 5 were women. In 41 per cent, of all his male patients hasheesh alone or combined with alcohol caused the disease, while this was the case in only 7 per cent, of the females. His conclusions on the subject aie, first, that in quite a considerable number of cases hash-