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Case of General Paralysis complicated with severe Unilateral Epileptiform Attacks, Temporary Hemiplegia, Aphasia, &c. Autopsy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

W. Julius Mickle*
Affiliation:
Grove Hall Asylum, London

Extract

George H——, a Quarter master-Sergeant in the 38th Regiment, was admitted into Grove Hall Asylum on the 12th of June, 1874. It was stated that the attack had then been of between one and two months' duration; that it was supposed to be aggravated, if not induced, by tropical climate; and that he had become epileptic. Previously to his admission he had been in a state of active maniacal excitement, incoherent, noisy, destructive, violent, and the subject of delusions of a grandiose character.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1876 

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References

Notes

This is doubtful. He was admitted into hospital on six occasions in India, between 1862 and 1870, for fever, diarrhæa, ague; and for cerebral symptoms in England, in March, 1874.Google Scholar

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Dr. Boyd has stated that the average weight of the left side of the cerebrum is about ½ oz. greater than that of the right side, but Dr. Thurnam mentions that Wagner has denied the preponderance of the left cerebrum. The subject of these notes was right-handed.Google Scholar

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In a healthy brain examined by Dr. Crichton Browne it seems that when the grey matter in corresponding situations in the two hemispheres varied in this respect the higher specific gravity was more frequent in the right than in the left one in the proportion of eight to five. Vide “Lancet,” Aug. 22, 1874, p. 269.Google Scholar

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This seems contradictory to his own statement on pago 602, that the specific gravity of the medullary matter is always diminished in general paralysis.Google Scholar

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The order of these phenomena was somewhat similar to that in a case by Dr. Hughlings Jackson, where the doubtful inference was drawn that the symptoms depended upon pressure on the healthy left corpus striatum.—Wide “Med. Times and Gaz.,” Aug. 15, 1868.Google Scholar

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