To sum up, "mania" may result from any unusual shock or strain upon the
nervous system; or it may come after any unusual mental excitement in
business, politics or in religion. Such are the exciting or stimulating
causes, but we must go back of the presence of worldly misfortune and
trace the tendency to mental disorder through channels of hereditary
influence. "Infants are born every day whose inevitable goal is that of
insanity." What is said in the Bible about sins of the parents is true.
DEMENTIA.--This term literally means "from mind," out of mind, and such a
person is in a state of the most deplorable mental poverty. We all have
seen such cases and some cases are not only very sad but disgusting.
PRIMARY DEMENTIA comes on independently of any other form of insanity.
SECONDARY DEMENTIA follows after some other form of insanity,--chiefly
melancholia or mania. Dementia may be acute or chronic.
SENILE (OLD AGE) DEMENTIA may be Primary.--Acute dementia attacks both
sexes, but it occurs most often in females, though in a milder degree. It
is a disease of youth, being rarely seen beyond thirty years of age. It
seems to depend often upon exhausting influences operating at a period of
rapid growth. Monotony of thought and feeling or want of mental food can
also induce it. Children who are sent at an early age into factories often
pass into the condition of acute dementia. Prison life also tends to
produce such a condition. Acute diseases such as typhoid and other fevers
are sometimes followed by acute dementia. Persons frequently go "out of
their mind" suddenly in this age, and upon recovering from acute dementia,
the patient finds a great "vacancy of memory."
Chronic Dementia.--Shakespeare says, "Last scene of all, that ends this
strange, eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion; sans
teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
"The Sans Everything."--Is the sad and hopeless obscuration by time or
disease of the once bright, vigorous, scintillating mental powers of
exhuperant and lusty youth. Everyone has seen such people who are
partially or hopelessly demented. It may come from diseases, such as
epilepsy and syphilis; alcohol produces it.
Senile dementia is the result of old age and of acquired brain disease. It
is different from simple old age or dotage. In old age the mind is
weakened, but the patient is conscious of it, such a person forgets a name
or date and gropes about in his memory to find it.
The demented person is not conscious of loss of memory, but applies wrong
names to persons, and serenely thinks he is right.
The senile demented person does not realize his condition, and if there is
any mental power left he cherishes delusions or false beliefs.
The victim of old age is unconscious of his weakness.
[314 MOTHERS' REMEDIES]
GENERAL PARESIS.--Wine, worry and women produce a great many cases of this
disease. The doctors claim a notorious criminal now committed to one
asylum and about whom we have read so much, is a victim of this disease.
First stage.--There is worry, anxiety, sleeplessness and melancholy.
Second stage.--Stage of mania, wealth, power, and grandeur, alternating in
some cases with attacks of temporary depressions.
Third stage.--Patient passes into a condition of subacute or chronic
mania, with a slow tendency to decadence of all the powers, idiotic.
Fourth stage.--Stage of physical and mental failure and of death. Syphilis
causes most cases. It usually develops between twenty-five and fifty
years. The outlook for such cases is very unfavorable, as the patient
usually dies from one to eight or ten years after the beginning of the
disease.
TREATMENT.--There have been great advances made in recent years in the
treatment of persons mentally unsound. They should be placed under proper
treatment at an early stage. The causes have been given so that preventive
measures may be taken.