PO-1841: Efficacy of a new dedicated immobilization device for treatment of Central Nervous disease

In so-called nervous disorders it is common to find changes occur in other of the bodily systems than the nervous. The pathology of nervous disease should be looked upon as a general pathology, and it is certain that we cannot look to the one system alone for causes of all the nervous disorders without greatly misunderstanding the whole subject. The more exact we become in limiting the causes, the more liable are we to error. We are all prepared to consider general paralysis of the insane as essentially a disease of the nervous system, a disease in which nearly every part of the nervous system may suffer sooner or later. But beside the essentially nervous symptoms which occur in the disease, we are constantly struck by the regular series of nutritional changes which occur in general paralysis, and this is so much the case that we are quite prepared to recognise as general paralysis a disorder in which any mental symptoms have been present, but have after a brief period of acuteness been followed by a state of fatness and weak-mindedness which again has been followed by a period of wasting and further mental weakness. We have here nervous symptoms related very directly with nutritional changes.

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The Value of Electricity in the Treatment of Insanity

Journal of Mental Science ◽

10.1192/bjp.30.131.354 ◽

1884 ◽

Vol 30 (131) ◽

pp. 354-359 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

A. H. Newth

Keyword(s):

The Other ◽

Nervous Disease ◽

Powerful Means ◽

The Subject

In the “Journal of Mental Science” for April, Dr. Alexander Robertson has referred to some observations of mine on the effects of galvanism in the treatment of insanity. These observations were made more than ten years ago. The cases chosen were not quite suitable or satisfactory; they were few in number, and the treatment was not thoroughly carried out. Still the results were far from being unsatisfactory; in fact they alone were quite sufficient to satisfy me that electricity, if properly and perseveringly applied in suitable cases, is a powerful means of cure. I am confirmed in this opinion not only by the results of these crude experiments, and others more recently and more carefully performed, but also from the value of electricity in other neuroses to which insanity is analogous. There are few who can deny, at least reasonably deny, that such neuroses as paralysis, chorea, neuralgia, anæsthesia, &c., are benefited in a most decided manner by electricity. There are forms of insanity, as all authorities on the subject affirm, which seem, if they really are not, identical with these neuroses, and it is not at all preposterous to assert that if it does good in one form of nervous disease it must do good in the other.

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