Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T15:20:33.897Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Diagnosis of Acute Mania and Melancholia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

J. G. Atkinson*
Affiliation:
Rook Nest, Wakefield

Extract

My object in this paper, is to endeavour to draw a strict line of demarcation between those forms of insanity which may be comprehended under the terms of mania and melancholia, and the delirium, which we witness in the various inflammatory affections of the brain fever, or delirium-tremens. If we were aware of the absolute pathological changes which exist in insanity, the correctness of a theory would be easily proved or disproved. In the absence, however, of evidence of this nature, which may be regarded as of a positive kind, I am compelled to draw my inferences from symptoms of disease during life, which may be regarded as evidence of a circumstantial nature. It is now some years since Dr. Wigan published a work on the duality of the mind, or, in other words, that as the brain consists of two sides or hemispheres, so these may have a distinct individuality of their own, just as occurs in the various senses, the eye, the ear, &c.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1860 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Kirk and Paget's Physiology. Google Scholar

Noble, Psychological Medicine. Google Scholar

Bucknill and Tute, Psychological Medicine. Google Scholar

Copland's Dict. Art. Insanity. Google Scholar

Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.