Clinical Notes on Haemorrhages in General Paralysis

In so-called nervous disorders it is common to find changes occur in other of the bodily systems than the nervous. The pathology of nervous disease should be looked upon as a general pathology, and it is certain that we cannot look to the one system alone for causes of all the nervous disorders without greatly misunderstanding the whole subject. The more exact we become in limiting the causes, the more liable are we to error. We are all prepared to consider general paralysis of the insane as essentially a disease of the nervous system, a disease in which nearly every part of the nervous system may suffer sooner or later. But beside the essentially nervous symptoms which occur in the disease, we are constantly struck by the regular series of nutritional changes which occur in general paralysis, and this is so much the case that we are quite prepared to recognise as general paralysis a disorder in which any mental symptoms have been present, but have after a brief period of acuteness been followed by a state of fatness and weak-mindedness which again has been followed by a period of wasting and further mental weakness. We have here nervous symptoms related very directly with nutritional changes.