Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1900: Vol. 56, Nov. 1899 to April, 1900Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1900: Vol. 56, Nov. 1899 to April, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
When we look for the physical equivalent of the mental state which
evokes the "sense of injury" we find it in dynamic and toxic states
of the nervous system and their correlation. Certain conditions of
the individual or environment bring these into special relief. Old
age is one. The querulousness, the sense of abuse or persecution
which afflict the aged and often lead them to take refuge in the
martyr-spirit, are sad examples. The state of fatigue or exhaustion is
another, and "neurasthenic" insanity is only an expression in greater
degree of the morbid mental action found in fatigue and exhausted
states.
The primary and secondary effects of alcohol or other narcotic
indulgence is another soil in which the "sense of injury" easily grows.
The _habitué_ is notoriously suspicious and irritable, and full of
fictitious grievances and unwarranted persecutory ideas. His attitude
toward them is that of the paranoiac, vindictive, rather than that
of the melancholiac, humiliated. They swell the army of so-called
"borderland" cases of insanity, fretting their friends and puzzling the
doctor with conduct alternately interpreted as "cussed" or "crazy."
Where there is bodily disease, acute or chronic, the morbid "sense
of injury" is much in play. An intelligent patient, on recovery from
a stomach disorder, admitted that whenever her stomach had ached she
was taken with a violent hatred of her companion with whom she was in
affectionate relation. An ignorant Southern colored woman, who had
rheumatism in her ankle, believed that she had been "hoodooed," and
explained the pain in her ankle by the presence of a snake, which she
believed had been put there by a "hoodoo." She was not insane, the
idea being consistent with her degree of intelligence, training, and
early environment. Another patient, a sensible, cultivated woman,
while suffering from a non-nervous illness, in which she had received
all the consideration that love and money could furnish, believed
herself to have been constantly and deliberately abused. After her
recovery, now some years, she still maintains the belief. Instances
could be multiplied, for doctors continually meet this atmosphere in
the sick-room, from ugly little grievances to delusions of persecution.
They are not surprised when a patient tells them in mingled confidence
and complaint that he is hungry and neglected, that "they" will
give him nothing to eat, etc., to find that his wife has been most
attentive, has been pressing him to eat, and has stocked the pantry in
anticipation. Dr. Johnson had plenty of ground for saying that a sick
man is a rascal, though the modern doctor has reversed the formula.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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