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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2018
We are always glad to meet (even though elsewhere) with the writings of our distinguished honorary member, Professor Laycock, the only university professor in the realm who deems the study of mental disease worthy of his systematic teaching. In this and recent numbers of the ‘Journal of Mental Science’ Professor Laycock, and our readers, will find in the interesting original communications by Dr. Crichton Browne and Dr. McLeod practical evidence that the Edinburgh University teaching of psychology has already borne fruit of great promise. In this paper Dr. Laycock has made a most valuable contribution to practical medicine. Any effort to check the practice of masking the symptoms of disease by opium, and calling the plan medical treatment, must be of advantage, and when such protest comes from so distinguished a quarter, will command an attention which our warnings and admonitions fail to receive. Dr. Laycock introduces his present remarks on the treatment of delirium tremens, a disease allied to and complicated with mental disease, properly so called, with the following just comment on the heroic treatment of the disease by opium:—
* An article in the ‘British and Foreign Med.-Chir. Review,’ for October, 1859, deserves special mention as a critical examination of the doctrines and practice current as to delirium tremens.Google Scholar
† “Exhibit opium in full and repeated doses. It is necessary to give from three to five grains, and to repeat these doses according to circumstances. In some cases it is necessary to give five grains every six or eight hours, and you must continue it till sleep is procured.” (‘Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Medicine,’ p. 325.)Google Scholar
* Commenting on a fatal case in his own practice, Dr. Watson says, “The manner of dying was just such as opium will produce, but then death by coma is also frequently the termination of delirium tremens. Effusion at length is apt to take place into the ventricles or into the meshes of the pia mater, and stupor comes on and the patient sinks. But in this instance, I was certain that his death had nothing to do with the opium he had taken, for this reason, that so long a space of time had elapsed—nine hours—between his taking the opium and the coming on of the comatose symptoms.”Google Scholar
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