Vol V, No 1 (1897)

T.F., about 30 years old, a peasant from the Chistopol district of the Kazan province, entered the Kazan District Medical Clinic on December 25, 1894). From the scanty preliminary information, it is only clear that on December 4 of the same year she gave birth in a city shelter for women in labor.
During the admission to the hospital, F. was extremely restless, clung to others, sat on the floor, and screamed furiously. Carried in her arms to the compartment, she continued to make noise and resist, so she had to be forcefully stripped and put into the bath. She refused food, first tried to knock a mug of milk out of the nurse's hands, and then, typing it in her mouth, sprinkled it on the sick, shouted that she had not received communion, she should soon die; she baptized all corners, was baptized herself. In view of the excited state, she was placed in the isolation ward. Here she spent the whole day in tireless movement, running from corner to corner, then baptizing the door, then stripping naked, she danced and shouted: “Lord have mercy, let me retire, oh, oh!” She was afraid for some reason on the mattress. She turned to the doctor who entered with a question, will she die soon? All day I did not eat or drink anything. Unkempt. Temperature in the evening 37.4 (under the arm); pulse 114.

With an increase in the number of people lived, the process of destruction in a human organism, like in any other, takes over the process of creation. But in one, the signs of reverse development begin late, manifest themselves gradually, mental life resists old age for a long time, in the other, the weakness of the body is already relatively early in the eye, and, above all, the manifestations of premature dying are found in the spiritual side of life. Sometimes they act so sharply, so far go beyond the limits of physiological changes, that a picture of a clearly expressed psychosis is obtained. Since, in many cases, the phenomena of dementia come to the fore in this picture, the disorder is called senile dementia.

Sessions of the Congress took place in the assembly hall of the university; the occupation lasted 6 days (from 12th to 17th August). The Congress attracted about one hundred participants of the most diverse nationalities; the prevailing element in the quantitative relation was made up of the representatives of the French language — the French, the Swiss and the Belgians, there were quite a few Russians) and very few English and Germans; There were many Italian scientists, and the present congress owes its interest and revitalization mainly to their presence.

The authors' views on the simulation of mental illnesses are distinguished by significant disagreements, reaching at some points to complete contradiction. Some authors, such as, for example, Schüle, in the course of 15 years of psychiatric practice did not encounter a single case of feigned insanity, it is emphasized that the pretense in mental illnesses "exists sooner as a ghostly fact, rather than". regarding the simulation of psychosis Jessen, Sander (out of 190 subjects, I met only two cases of pretense), Moeli, Vingtri nier (out of 43,000 criminals, only one was found to have simulated psychosis) and friend. These authors, as it were, in explaining their conclusions regarding the simulations psychoses say that simulation, in fact, is a symptom of an illness, it is the result of mental disorder, that only a mentally ill person or a subject highly predisposed to mental illness can simulate well, because, according to their opinion, there can be a consistency and coherence, if there is no rudiment of real madness in its foundation procession"(Maudsly). Apparently, prof. Korsakov In his guide, he writes: “in the vast majority of cases, a person who has real inclinations of illness begins to simulate a mental illness”. he says that only especially important reasons can induce a mentally healthy person to simulate insanity"; in addition, he adds that simulators, in the face of the strong mental stress to which they subject themselves, in the conclusion of their experience can continue to be useful.

During the 1894/95 academic year, we had the opportunity to observe the following case in the clinic.
The patient, Adam M-sky, 30 years old, was admitted to the clinic on December 10, 1894. He fell ill in the month of the same year, after he slept, during the last rest, on the ground. When he woke up, he felt severe pain in his arms and legs on the left side (on which he slept), somehow reached with the help of others to the house, where he was forced to go to bed. There was a chill at night; More accurate data on fever cannot be reported.

In a very extensive work, based on the observations of other authors and eleven own cases, Laehr comes to the following conclusions. With syringomyelia, as well as with other central diseases of the spinal cord, the prevalence of disorders of skin sensitivity is of a certain nature. These sensory lesions are similar to those caused by lesions of the posterior roots or transverse cuts of the spinal cord. The anatomical reason for the disorder of skin sensitivity is the destruction of the posterior sacrago substance at the corresponding level of the spinal cord.

Based on two own observations with consistent pathological and anatomical studies and critical analysis of the literature of the subject, the author comes to the conclusion that in one third of cases of spinal cord tumors, surgery can lead to cure. The precise recognition of the tumor site, which is necessary for success, is possible much more often than it was customary to think until recently.

On the basis of a study of one hundred and ten cases, the author asserts that a single examination on a block does not yet give the right to conclude that, indeed, a patient has drunken delirium there is no problem. At the height of the disease, 76% have protein; 36% of the blocks were in large quantities, 52% only temporarily. Albuminuria is not worth in accordance with fever, but with delirium and pulse.

These two articles deserve great attention, as a sign of the times: even in such a magazine as Archiv f. Psychiatrie, the question of a congenital criminal is already being discussed; A work has been published here, proving that many criminals are completely incomprehensible either to psychiatry or to criminal law. These two articles, one must think, are only the beginning of a whole series of works, which will radically change the scope and principles of psychiatric examination.

The author has collected important observations concerning the side effects of bromide drugs used in large doses. Most often, the skin (dermatoses) is affected, then the organ of vision (conjunctivitis, amblyopia, myopia, diplopia, etc.), the bladder, abdominal organs and, finally, the central nervous system. The author cites from his own practice 8 cases of epilepsy (grand mal et petit mal), treated with bromide preparations, mainly potassium bromide, in doses equal to 12 grm. pro die.

The author cites the history of the illness of one patient with manifestations of cortical epilepsy: convulsions began on the face, then passed on to the arm and leg, for the most part the seizure was limited to one left side. Left n. facialis was paralyzed; in the left extremities - paresis with reduced rigidity and increased tendon reflexes, while in the arms paresis and rigidity were almost the same, and rigidity prevailed in the legs. After the seizure, the paralysis intensified sharply. Some seizures were preceded by a motor aura: clonic convulsions in the paralyzed limbs. Left side sensitivity was decreased; muscle feeling — weakened, stronger in the arms, less in the legs. The patient died of tuberculous pneumonia. When opened, found in the right hemisphere softening, which occupied the lower third of the posterior central gyrus. Gyrus marginalis in the anterior part was destroyed. The softening into the depths did not extend equally. In the rear part, it went quite deep; the radiant end in the supramargi nalis area is softened, the system of long connecting paths, apparently, is not affected; small focus — in the superior parietal gyrus In the middle of the focus, destruction is limited to the cortex. In the front part, the softening was located under the cortical layer and reached the inner capsule. Deep-lying gray masses, corpus callosum and cingulum have survived from destruction. Microscopic examination showed extensive degeneration in connective and adhesive pathways; the descending rebirth was barely expressed and was found only in Marchi.

The group of senile psychoses, the author says, can only include those that develop in old people who have not suffered from any mental disorder before. The author tries to classify the psychoses of old age, at which it is stipulated that he proposes his own classification “without claims to its naturalness”.

By this year, the Society of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists at the Imperial Kazan University begins the sixth year of its scientific activity. This activity over the past year was expressed in the following way.