Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T06:07:31.660Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On Certain Nervous Affections of Old Persons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Extract

In the present paper I do not intend to deal with those graver affections, such as apoplexy or paralysis, which frequently occur in the aged, and which depend on gross lesions of tissue. Nor shall I mention the severe and intractable neuralgias of advanced life. I desire to direct attention to a class of neuroses, which more or less inevitably attend the decline of life, and which, though they do not involve any serious catastrophe, are the cause of so much suffering that it is surprising that they should have received little or no systematic notice from medical writers. The neglect of these complaints is not merely a negative evil; for, owing to the fact that their neurotic nature is ignored, certain superficial symptoms which they present are treated as if they depended on functional disturbance of the liver, or ordinary stomach catarrh, &c., and very often with depressing remedies, which greatly aggravate the existing evil.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1870

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.