W. P. a young man aged twenty-five, was admitted into the hospital
September 26, 1795. He had been disordered five months, and had
experienced a similar attack six years before. The disease was brought on
by excessive drinking. He was in a very furious state, in consequence of
which he was constantly confined. He got little or no sleep--during the
greater part of the night he was singing, or swearing, or holding
conversations with persons he imagined to be about him: sometimes he would
rattle the chain with which he was confined for several hours together,
and tore every thing to pieces within his reach. In the beginning of
November the violence of his disorder subsided for two or three days, but
afterwards returned; and on the 10th he died compleatly exhausted by his
exertions.--Upon opening the head the pericranium was found firmly
attached; the pia mater was inflamed, though not to any very considerable
degree; the tunica arachnoides in some places was slightly shot with
blood; the membranes of the brain, and its convolutions when these were
removed, were of a brown, or brownish straw colour. There was no water in
any of the cavities of the brain, nor any particular congestion of blood
in its substance--the consistence of which was natural. He was opened
twenty hours after death.