Vol XIX, No 3 (1912)

As far as the human mind is developed, the area of ​​the miraculous and supernatural is wider and immense for it; therefore, all the incomprehensible and striking phenomena of him belong to him to the action of a higher, mysterious power. This is the origin of the world outlook of primitive peoples, in whom, over the course of time, invisible abstract forces were recognized as deities governing the fate of people, at which there usually arose the influence of deities on good and evil, clean and unclean. Deities have their servants — angels and gods. Evil spirits and their incarnations in the image of bots, according to the primitive peoples and uncultured popular masses, have great influence on human life; unhappiness, death and illness depend on them. Sumtsov) says that diseases have long been among different peoples in the form of demonic beings. The spirits of darkness are doctors of health and life; they penetrate into the body of a person and serve as a source of illnesses, they darken the mind and torment the body. Already in the brick books of the ancient Chaldeans, there are conspiracies against diseases, like demonic beings. Among the Iranians, magic spells and cleansing from illnesses were widespread, like unclean demonic creatures. Among the Greeks and Romans, illnesses also had a demonic meaning, In the ancient Scandinavians, internal illnesses were attributed to the action of evil spirits and treated them with conspiracies and sympathetic means. In England in the X and XI centuries and later internal illnesses were considered directly caused by evil spirits, elves, demons, spells of sorcerers or the pernicious influence of the evil eye. The Slavs, in particular the Russians, share the demonic origin of illnesses with all other peoples.

The history of the disease. Patient, student of the Faculty of Law of Kazan University, B, 22 years old. I applied to the clinic on January 21, 1911 with complaints of lack of movement in the wrist and fingers of the left hand, sensation of cold and onѣmeniya in the same hand up to half of the shoulder, inclusive. The patient tells the following about the beginning of his illness: on January 4, 1911, after standing for 1/2 hour on a sharp wooden railing with his left hand, just the outer side of his shoulder, he felt cold, he felt a chill in his hand and a feeling of chills; I wanted to straighten my jacket, but I could not, since the hand and fingers of my left hand did not function well enough. While standing, I did not feel anything and calmly talked to those around him (it happened in the people's house). Before dark alcohol did not drink and was completely healthy. Two days before that (January 1 and 2), the patient had a runny nose, cough and a slight fever, but he felt good.

The first Congress on genealogy, scholarship on inheritance and regeneration, held in the city of Giessen on April 11-13, p. The city is undoubtedly of considerable interest. Modern science has long been practicing congresses on individual scientific disciplines, the methods of which in the main have long been determined, developed and agreed upon. The doctrine of inheritance, which is the basis of all our knowledge, touching the most subtle aspects of the existence of the organic world, which is, perhaps, the most mysterious of all the secrets of the world — until the very last. time has been given in means. the degree of individual aspirations; The Congress in Giessen is the first attempt at a systematic collective discussion of the issue, if not in its entirety, which, due to its grandeur, is hardly possible, then, at least, in an area of ​​particular interest to a physician, in its main and essential features. I must in advance give up the idea of ​​giving an exhaustive description of the work of the Congress, as I would like to. There are too many reasons for this, and the main one is the well-known breadth of his program, which included quite special areas of knowledge such as scientific genealogy using new methods, scholarship on inheritance in the broad sense of the word, with statistical theories, partly scholarship on crime, reports on biometrics, the field of sociology, racial hygiene, etc. It goes without saying that each of these sections is based on the main theses, has its own extensive literature and history, and its characterization would require special knowledge and a lot of time. In addition, the amount of material available in the form of auto-abstracts is very small, and the language of the Congress was the German language, often with regional and individual characteristics that made it difficult to understand it, and, in general, for an unaccustomed ear, it is not quite easy; the proceedings of the Congress will come out early in the fall. Under such conditions, it is clear that my message can only relate to a part of the work of the Congress and cannot in any way claim either completeness or depth of presentation. In addition, I had too little time in my order to compose the message, which made it even more difficult to make sufficient use of even the small material that I have at my disposal.

Discussing the issue of graphic depiction of the movement of the frontal muscles, the author describes the Sommer apparatus modified by him, with the help of which the movement processes on the forehead, their speed, as well as the relative participation in the movement of both frontal muscles - frontalis and corrugator, are graphically depicted.

The author describes a case of six-fingeredness in the family, in which this abnormality has already been observed in the course of four generations. On this occasion, he cites a whole series of works concerning the question of the inheritance of morphological abnormalities, both in humans and in animals. In one of these works (Gruber. Vortrag über die Vererbung. Deutsche med. Wochenschz. 1909. S. 1995) it is indicated that, as a rule, the number of deformities decreases from generation to generation, if the deformities are not introduced from outside by marriages and are not amplified by kindred marriage (Insucht). Further in the same work, it is indicated that the appearance of such abnormal signs follows the apparently Mendel's laws of inheritance.

The author points out the relative difficulty of the differential diagnosis between catatonic and epileptic states in these cases, when the doctor is deprived of the opportunity to obtain an accurate anamnesis.

Considering the issue of the ethological connection between the trauma and the mental illness that followed it, the author informs the story of the illness of patient G. , characterized by vague delusional ideas of a hypochondriacal nature and ideas of persecution, which seem to be in connection with deceptions of the senses. Along with a deep weakness of will and lack of initiative, the disease gave a picture of dementiae paranoides.

Dr. Golyanitskiy in his experimental research studied the conditions of acceleration and deceleration of the process of regeneration of cell elements; in addition, at the suggestion of prof. S. S. Chirvinsky, Dr. Golyanitsky studied the influence on the growth of cellular elements of some organogenic preparations.

In the first part of his book, the author gives a definition of what an “imaginary illness” is, gives a brief history of its development, acquaints the reader with the process of the emergence of representations, while emphasizing what role imagination plays in this process; A number of examples and references to Freud are provided as proof that imagination, especially in people of little intelligence, is the cause of various disorders in the body.