Insanity : its causes, prevention, and cure including apoplexy, epilepsy, and congestion of the brain / by Joseph Williams.

  • Williams, Joseph, 1814-1882.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity : its causes, prevention, and cure including apoplexy, epilepsy, and congestion of the brain / by Joseph Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a private patient, and which in public hospitals are undertaken as a matter of mere routine, it will be found that the very remedies themselves have to be adapted, not only to the individual symptoms, but almost to the very class to which the individual belongs, and however, some may aifect to laugh at the truth of this expression, it is a fact which ex- perience must subsequently teach them. The patients principally referred to in this work, have been chiefly of the upper portion of the middle classes, many of them highly intellectual, and this I mention for the purpose of suggesting, whether in such cases narcotics are not even more especially useful, than where the mental faculties have never been improved ? Still from the few cases I do see amongst the poor, I find that the sedative treatment produces the same remarkable effects, and it is indeed impossible for me to press too strongly upon the notice of the Profession, the absolute necessity of endeavouring to procure sleep in that state of restlessness and vigilantia which precedes and ac- companies insanity. Experience proves to me 'that, although upon consideration and reflection, medical men invarial)ly admit the importance of inducing sleep under such circumstances, yet in actual prac- tice they not unfrequently fail to take advantage of the various narcotics which our Materia Medica offer; and I believe that opinions disseminated by some even di.stinguished medical oflicers of our own lunatic aaylums, to the effect that narcotics are