Isolating the phthisical insane

Insane Delusions

American Institutions for the Insane

We subjoin an able article from the pen of a distinguished American psychologist, Dr. Pliny Enrle, on the present state of the principal Asylums for the Insane in the United States of America.* It is taken from two consecutive numbers of Dr. Hay's ably conducted and excellent periodical, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences. The reports upon which this paper is based are so difficult to...

General Paralysis of the Insane

It is a singular fact that, notwithstanding the deeply interesting nature of the subject, only one monograph on the General Paralysis of the Insane (the treatise by Dr. Winn) has appeared in this country; whilst on the continent, not less than five monographs have been published during the last thirty years. Dr. Winn's treatise, published in 1848, and previously printed as an original article i...

The Proofs of the Existence of a Phthisical Contagion

The contagiousness of tuberculosis is a subject of peculiar interest to the medical profession of this district, inas-much as it was here that our late colleague, Dr. Wm. Budd, startled the profession by announcing his belief that phthisis would be found to be contagious. The grounds of his belief were as follows:?* (a) Considerations based on the pathology of phthisis, as showing it to consist...

The bones of the insane

This article examines alienist explanations for fracture among British asylum patients in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. A series of deaths in asylums came to light in the 1870s which, in placing the blame for such incidents on asylum staff, called for a response from the psychiatric profession. This response drew upon other medical fields and employed novel pathological tech...