alcohol, tobacco, constipation
PSYCHONEUROSIS
OCULAR DISTURBANCES
EAR DISEASE
MÉNIÈRE’S DISEASE
MIGRAINE
Chart 19
Salvarsanized serum was injected intraventricularly through a trephine opening in the right frontal region. Injections were made through the corpus callosum into the third ventricle. There was progressive symptomatic improvement after each of four injections. In fact, after the fourth injection the patient was allowed to leave the hospital despite the fact that there was only a slight improvement in the spinal fluid findings. The speech defect had entirely disappeared. (Speech defect, according to many authorities, including Kraepelin, is of very grave diagnostic significance.) His memory returned. Mr. Donovan is now able to handle figures rather extraordinarily well. He now has a good insight into his delusions and tells stories about them with great humor.
1. What is the definition of a remission in general paresis? Remissions form a foil to seizures; just as seizures mark a sudden advance in the severity of the disease or may even lead to death; so remissions may cause a sudden cessation of both mental and nervous phenomena in the disease. Whereas the seizures occur most often, according to Kraepelin, in the demented types of paresis, the remissions occur in all cases except in the terminal phase. Kraepelin quotes Hoppe as observing pronounced remissions of long duration in 17% of male and 15% of female paretics. Gaupp observed marked improvement in less than 10%, and very marked improvement indeed in only 1% of his cases. Kraepelin states that such improvements are most frequent in agitated and especially in expansive forms of paresis, and that they are rarer and less complete in the depressive and demented forms. Sometimes the improvement occurs over night, although the full extent of the remission becomes complete only gradually, perhaps in the course of months. The sensorium clears, the disorientation disappears, the delusions retreat, and the former delusions are treated as dreams and imaginations. There is often a good deal of persistent uncertainty as to events during the height of the disease. The nervous disorders are far more obstinate than the mental. Still, both speech and writing may often greatly improve.
Cotton in New Jersey found, among 127 cases of paresis diagnosticated by modern methods during seven years, that remissions occurred in but five, or about 4%, lasting from a half to three years.