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An Analysis of 200 Cases of Mental Defect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

J. E. Middlemiss
J. E. Middlemiss*
Affiliation:
Leeds Committee for the Care of Mental Defectives; Late Assistant Medical Officer, Gartloch Mental Hospital, N.B.
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Extract

The cases dealt with in the present paper came under review during the course of my duties as Medical Officer to the Leeds Committee under the Mental Deficiency Act. They comprise examples of the four varieties of mental defectives defined by that Act, viz., idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded, and moral imbeciles, and include most of the clinical types described by writers on the subject. The commonly accepted division into primary and secondary groups has been adopted; a third group, containing cases which appear to combine the characteristics of both types, and a fourth group containing “doubtful” cases, in which the data are insufficient to allocate them definitely, being also added. It has seemed useful, too, to give columns showing the number of cases corresponding to the accepted clinical types, those complicated by epilepsy, those exhibiting pronounced stigmata of degeneration, as well as those showing a definite family history of neuropathic affections, tubercle, or alcohol respectively. It is obvious that many of these cases will figure under the several heads. The following analysis then shows the proportion of cases under each of these heads of the total number of cases examined, viz., 200:

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 66 , Issue 274 , July 1920 , pp. 254 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1920 

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References

(1) Tredgold, A. F. —Mental Deficiency, p. 224.Google Scholar
(2) Shaw Bolton, J. —The Brain in Health and Disease, p. 199.Google Scholar
(3) Frieze Stephens, H. —“The Compluetic Reaction in Amentia,” Journ. Ment. Sci., October, 1916.Google Scholar
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(10) “Lethargic Encephalitis.”—Paper read before Med. Soc. of London by Col. E. Farquhar Buzzard, Brit. Med. Journ., December 24th, 1918.Google Scholar
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(2) The so-called delayed primary amentia, in which there is a latent period of normal mentality, is after all only a sub-division of primary amentia, in which the potentiality for normal development is rather greater than in the typical cases of this group.—(3) “The co-existence of epilepsy and mental disease is thus of such a character as to indicate that both conditions are symptomatic of cerebral degeneracy” (The Brain in Health and Disease, by Shaw Bolton, J., p. 199).Google Scholar
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