|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 26
Little by little, in fact, men have had to state with astonishment that
all lunatics were not at Bloomingdale. Outside the hospital, in the
family of the unfortunate lunatic, or even in other groups, one observed
strange complaints, moanings relating to lesions which were not visible,
inability to move notwithstanding the apparent integrity of the organs,
contradictory and incomprehensible affirmations; in one word, abnormal
behaviors, very different to normal behaviors, regularized by the laws
and by reason.
What was the meaning of these queer behaviors? At first they were very
badly understood; they were supposed to have some connection with being
possessed (with the devil), with miasmata, vapors, unlikely
perturbations of the body and animal spirits that circulated in the
nerves. One spoke, as did still Prof. Pomme at the end of the eighteenth
century, "of the shrivelling up of the nerves."[14] But above all, one
preserved the conviction that these queer disorders were very different
to the mental disorders of lunacy. These peculiar individuals had, it
was said, all their reason; they remained capable of understanding their
fellow creatures and of being understood by them; they were not to be
expelled from society like the poor lunatics; therefore their illness
should be anything but the mental disorders of lunacy.
Physicians, as it is just, watched their patients and only confirmed
their opinion by fine scientific theories. They christened these new
disorders by the name of neuroses, reserving the name of psychoses for
the mental disorders of lunatics. During the whole of the nineteenth
century the radical division of neuroses and psychoses was accepted as a
dogma; on the one side, one described epilepsies, hysterias,
neurasthenias; on the other, one studied manias, melancholias,
paranoias, dementias, without preoccupying oneself in the least with the
connections those very ill-defined disorders might have the ones with
the others. This division was accentuated by the organization of the
studies and the treatment of the patients. The houses that received the
neurotic patients and the insane were absolutely distinct. The
physicians who attended the ones and the others were different, and even
supplied by different competitions. In France, even now, the recruiting
of asylum house pupils and hospital house pupils, the recruiting of
asylum doctors and that of hospital doctors, give an opportunity for
different competitions. One might almost say that these two categories
of house pupils and doctors have quite a different education. The result
was that the examination of the patients, the study thereof, and even
their treatment, were for the most part often conceived in quite a
different manner. For example, neuroses were studied publicly; the
examination was on elementary sensibilities, the movements of the limbs,
and especially reflexes; the insane were more closely examined in the
mental point of view, in conversations held with them by the physician
alone. Their arguments, their ideas were noted more than their
elementary movements. Strange to say, just when the psycho-therapeutic
treatments by reasoning and moralizing with the patients were being
developed, they stood out the contrary of what one might have
supposed--that this treatment should be applied to neurotic patients
alone. It was admitted that lunatics were probably not able to feel this
moral and rational influence; they were treated by isolation,
shower-baths, and purgatives.
This complete division did not fail to bring about singular and
unfortunate consequences. In a hospital such as La Salpetri�re the tic
sufferers, the impulsive, those beset with obsessions, the hysterical
with fits and delirium were placed near the organic hemiplegics and the
tabetics who did not resemble them in the least, and completely
separated from the melancholic, the confused, the systematical raving,
notwithstanding evident analogies. If Charcot who, moreover, has brought
about so much progress in these studies, committed some serious errors
in the interpretation of certain phenomena of hysteria, is it not
greatly due to his having studied these neurotic patients with the
neurology methods without ever applying psychiatry methods? Is it not
strange to refuse psychological treatment precisely to those who present
psychological disorders to the highest degree, and to place the insane
who thinks and suffers altogether outside of psychology?
In fine, this distinction between the neurotic sufferer and the mental
sufferer was mostly arbitrary and depended more than was believed on the
patient's social position and fortune. Important and rich families could
not be resigned to see one of their members blemished by the name of
lunatic, and the physician very often qualified him as neurasthenic to
please the family. A few years ago this distinction of the patients and
of the physicians gave rise to a very amusing controversy in the
newspapers. The professor of the clinic for diseases of the nervous
system asserted that neurotic sufferers should be patients set apart for
neurologist physicians alone, whereas the alienist should content
himself with real lunatics. The professor of the clinic for mental
diseases protested with much wit and claimed the right of attending
equally the neurotic patients. All this proved a great confusion in the
ideas.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|