Observations on Madness and Melancholy: Including Practical Remarks on those Diseases together with Cases and an Account of the Morbid Appearances on DissectionHaslam, John
Science
Observations on Madness and Melancholy: Including Practical Remarks on those Diseases together with Cases and an Account of the Morbid Appearances on Dissection
Haslam, John
Depression, Mental; Melancholy; Psychiatry -- Early works to 1900; Psychology, Pathological
In St. Luke's hospital, the largest public receptacle for insane persons,
where the medical treatment is directed by a physician of the highest
character and eminence, and whose experience is, at least, equal to that
of any professional man in this country, vomits are by no means considered
as the order of the day; they may be employed to remove symptoms
concomitant with madness, but are not held as specifics for this disease.
In reading over the cases related by Dr. Cox, there is no one, where
emetics have been solely employed as agents of cure; they have been always
linked with other remedies; and it requires more sagacity than even the
doctor can exact, to pronounce, when different means of cure are combined,
to which the palm should be adjudged. In the relation of my own experience
concerning vomiting, as a remedy for insanity, I have had only in view the
communication of facts, for I entertain neither partiality nor aversion to
any remedies, beyond the fair claim which their operations possess. Had I
modestly ventured to state, after the example of the Doctor, "that I had
_devoted_ myself _exclusively_ and _assiduously_ for a _series of years_,
to the care of insane patients in an _establishment_, where persons of
_both sexes_ are received,"[37] it might be suspected, that the
superstructure of my philosophy had been reared on the basis of private
emolument.
_Camphor._
This remedy has been highly extolled, and doubtless with reason, by those
who have recommended it: my own experience merely extends to ten cases; a
number, from which no decisive inference of its utility ought to be drawn.
The dose was gradually increased, from five grains to two drachms, twice a
day; and, in nine cases, the use of this remedy was continued for the
space of two months. Of the patients, to whom the camphor was given, only
two recovered: one of these had no symptoms of convalescence for several
months after the use of this remedy had been abandoned: the other, a
melancholic patient, certainly mended during the time he was taking it;
but he was never able to bear more than ten grains thrice a day. He
complained that it made him feel as if he were intoxicated. Considering
the insoluble nature of camphor, and the impracticability of compelling a
lunatic to swallow a pill or bolus, it has been found convenient (when a
large quantity was required) to give this medicine in the form of an
emulsion, by dissolving the camphor in hot olive oil, and afterwards
adding a sufficient quantity of warm water and aqua ammoniae purae.
_Cold Bathing._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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