Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-94d59 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T03:22:59.711Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Syphilitic General Paralysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

M. J. Nolan*
Affiliation:
Dublin District Asylum

Extract

At the present time, when our fin de siècle knowledge of “general paralysis” enables us to recognize under that generic term many types of the disorder, and when the relation between it and syphilis continues a rather vexed question, little apology is needed for introducing to notice the following cases. They illustrate unmistakably some of the instances in which syphilis is solely responsible for what. Is termed by Dr. Savage” A process of degeneration which ultimately produces the ruin we recognize as general paralysis.” Whatever may be hereafter formulated from the present evolutionary crisis in the history of the disorder there can be but little doubt that syphilis will be one of its most intimate and important relations. The story of its methods is briefly sketched in the following two short life-histories—in one asserting itself in the offspring of its victims by right of impure heredity, in the other carrying death direct into the vital centres by the force of its malignant virus.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1893 

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.