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Clinical Instruction in Insanity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

John Sibbald*
Affiliation:
Scotland

Extract

At the meeting of members of the Medico-Psychological Association which took place last November, in Edinburgh, a resolution was passed expressing “a strong opinion as to the necessity of making clinical teaching in insanity imperative in every medical curriculum.” It was agreed that it would not be wise on our part, as an association, to specify the details of those measures, which we hoped the various medical schools might feel disposed to take in furtherance of this object. But it is evidently the special duty of members of this association to consider the subject carefully in every detail, and to be prepared to give a mature opinion upon it.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1871 

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References

To show how misty are the conceptions which medical practitioners in general have of these conditions, it may be mentioned, that at a recent trial three medical practitioners were examined, one of whom declared that the prisoner suffered from mental depression, another that she suffered from acute mania, and the third that she laboured under dementia. Such occurrences are not uncommon.Google Scholar

“We must hail the complete union of this apparently dissevered branch of medical enquiry and practice with the whole field of professional inquiry. It is, of the cerebral affections, among the gravest, and yet most curable, and cannot be isolated. It should be studied, taught, and practiced with its congeners.”—Annual Address before the Medical Society of the State of New York, February 6, 1868, by John P. Gray, M.D., President of the Society, and Medical Superintendent of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, Utica.Google Scholar

“To diagnose the nature and seat of the physical lesion of the brain and nerves is the great problem to be solved in each individual case, and hero the .alienist stands side by side with the general practitioner.”—Dr. Gray, op. cit.Google Scholar

Dr. Beigrave writes, regarding the asylum at St Petersburg:— “The history of the asylum, though short, has satisfactorily proved the compatibility of clinical instruction with successful domestic management and medical treatment.” — “Journal of Mental Science.” April, 1867.Google Scholar

I have never known anyone who had experience of any moderately well organized attempt, believe that there is any real difficulty in dealing with the patients during a demonstration.Google Scholar

Many cases might be cited in support of this statement; few have had much to do with insanity without seeing them. I have seen a patient who had been seized with acute idiopathic mania, the result of anxiety, reduced to such a condition in a few days, by so-called antiphlogistic treatment, as to sink from exhaustion chiefly duo to the treatment. Such cases are not infrequent.Google Scholar

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