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
E. M. a woman, aged sixty, was admitted into the house, August 8th, 1795;
she had been disordered five months: the cause assigned was extreme grief,
in consequence of the loss of her only daughter. She was very miserable
and restless; conceived she had been accused of some horrid crime, for
which she apprehended she should be burned alive. When any persons entered
her room she supposed them officers of justice, who were about to drag her
to some cruel punishment. She was frequently violent, and would strike
and bite those who came near her. Upon the idea that she should shortly be
put to death, she refused all sustenance; and it became necessary to force
her to take it. In this state she continued, growing daily weaker and more
emaciated, until October 3d, when she died.
Upon opening the head, there was a copious determination of blood to the
whole contents of the cranium. The pia mater was considerably inflamed;
there was not any water either in the ventricles or between the membranes.
The brain was particularly soft. She was opened thirty hours after death.
CASE V.
W. P. a young man, aged twenty-five, was admitted into the hospital,
September 26th, 1795. He had been disordered five months, and had
experienced a similar attack six years before. The disease was brought on
by excessive drinking. He was in a very furious state, in consequence of
which he was constantly confined. He very seldom slept--during the greater
part of the night he was singing, or swearing, or holding conversations
with persons he imagined to be about him: sometimes he would rattle the
chain with which he was confined, for several hours together, and tore
every thing to pieces within his reach. In the beginning of November, the
violence of his disorder subsided for two or three days, but afterwards
returned; and on the 10th he died compleatly exhausted by his
exertions.--Upon opening the head the pericranium was found firmly
attached; the pia mater was inflamed, though not to any very considerable
degree; the tunica arachnoidea in some places was slightly shot with
blood; the membranes of the brain, and its convolutions, when these were
removed, were of a brown, or brownish straw colour. There was no water in
any of the cavities of the brain, nor any particular congestion of blood
in its substance--the consistence of which was natural. He was opened
twenty hours after death.
CASE VI.
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