File:Mental diseases. A text-book of psychiatry for medical students and practitioners (1913) (14592219698).jpg

Identifier: mentaldiseaseste00cole (find matches)
Title: Mental diseases. A text-book of psychiatry for medical students and practitioners
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Cole, Robert Henry, 1866-1926
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Publisher: New York, Wood
Contributing Library: Columbia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons

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This is so far true that an alcoholic parentage meansin most cases an unstable nervous inheritance, and that theabuse of alcohol, or a diseased condition of any kind in theparents, at the time of conception, cannot be supposed toconduce to healthy offspring. This applies also to the motherduring pregnancy, especially in the earlier months; emotionalshocks or injury may produce failure in nutrition of the foetus,leading later to an arrest of mental growth. This may accountfor its abnormal frequency in illegitimate children. A badconfinement is often held to be the cause; prolonged labour, 142 IDIOCY AND IMBECILITY 143 the use of forceps and of anaesthetics, are all blamed in somecases, but it must be borne in mind that an irregularly formedhead is often the cause of difficult childbirth. It is, moreover,a fact that idiocy is commoner in boys than in girls, and thatthe male infants head is proportionately larger than that ofthe female. It also occurs more frequently in first pregnancies
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Fig. 26.—Genetous idiocy. and last pregnancies, the former bemg probably due to theexigencies of a first labour, and the latter to the failure of themothers nervous energy. Organic brain-trouble in the child,inherited Syphilis, or acquired disease such as Cerebral Menin-gitis or Haemorrhage with resulting paralysis, lead to mentalarrest, and so do Scarlet fever and other exanthems. Convul-sions from teething indicate an innate nerve instability whichsometimes produces mental defect. Consanguinity has an 144 MENTAL DISEASES increasing effect, if neuroses occur in both parents. The chil-dren of aged parents, or of those disproportionate in age, arefrequently defective, and sometimes also children of prematurebirth. Early ossification of the skull signifies that there isalready brain defect, rather than that the brain is preventedfrom growing. Varieties of Idiocy 1. Genetous.—This class consists of those idiots that aremore essentially congenital than the other varieties, and inwhich

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