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On Some of the Varieties of Morbid Impulse and Perverted Instinct

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

W. C. McIntosh*
Affiliation:
Perth District Asylum, Murthly

Extract

The various forms under which morbid impulses and perverted instincts present themselves have generally been classed by authors under “Moral Insanity” † and “Emotional Insanity,” † or each has been titled a mania or monomania. Their occurrence is found to be regulated by the degree of civilisation, mode of life–whether in town or country–and the prevailing tendencies of the age, which indelibly stamps them with its characteristic features. The classification adopted in the following pages is that of Professor Laycock, § which leads us first to examine those connected with the nourishment of the being.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1866 

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References

It is but fair to state that this paper is an abstract of one written in 1862, as a sequel to two papers which appeared in the ‘Psychological Journal’ for 1863, and based on the Browne Prize Essay, Univ. Edin., 1860.Google Scholar

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See a very valuable paper on this subject by Professor Laycock, ‘Jour. Psychol. Med.’ April, 1855.Google Scholar

The Rev. W. McHwaine, in the ‘Journal of Ment. Sci.’ for January, 1862, calls it Œnomania or Methyskomania.Google Scholar

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If structural lesion occurs in any of these cases of affection of the will or volition, we shall find it in the pons Varolii and cerebrum, according to Gerdy, Mueller, Lorget, and others; Brown-Séquard, however, localises it in the thalami optici and corpora striata. ‘Lectures on the Pbysiol and Pathol, of the Nerv. Syst.’ p. 228.Google Scholar

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[My friend Dr. Lauder Lindsay, in a paper published in the November number of the ‘Edinburgh Med. Jour.’ for 1865, uses the term “hysteromania” to designate the emotional features of a case of “temporary insanity,” apparently unaware of the very different meaning in which authors have used this word. Vide Guislain, ‘Lecons Orales,’ tom, i, p. 179, &c. Thus does he (Dr. Lindsay), while denouncing the prolix nature of modern scientific nosologies, propagate a similar error to that he attacks on the next page, in support of a mere business classification of insanity (founded on observations deduced from asylum reports), and which in its simplicity leaves out moral insanity altogether !—November, 1865.]Google Scholar

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“Quid dicam quantus amor bestiarum sit in educandis custodiendisque iis, quæ procreaverint, usque ad eum finem, dum posaint seipsa defendere !” Cicero, De Nat. Deor.’Google Scholar

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Vide also ‘Jour, of Prac. Med. and Surgery,’ Paris, January, 1858, where a case is given of an excited female who endeavoured to throw her child into an oven to bake it. She was cured by drachm doses of sulphuric ether administered per anum.Google Scholar

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Commissioner Browne, in ‘Repts. Crichton Instit.’ I may here acknowledge the great interest, information, and pleasure which the perusal of these effusions gave me in 1860 (an opportunity for which I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Lauder Lindsay). Though 1 am very far from thinking that nowadays an asylum report is the proper place for medical disquisitions, of whatever kind, it must be recollected that times were then very different.Google Scholar

Tincture of Lobelia iuflata, as recommended by Dr. Baudelocque, is a useful sedative in such cases.Google Scholar

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Dr. Laycock, ‘Nerv. Dis. on Women,’ p. 353.Google Scholar

Id., op. cit., p. 254.Google Scholar

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