In the proper season this
condition is very well treated by sea-bathing. There is no specific plan
of treatment in acute articular rheumatism. The treatment pursued
must vary according to the intensity of the inflammation and the
peculiarities of the patients.--_Medical Gazette_.
* * * * *
METHOD IN MADNESS.
No psychologist has hitherto been able, and probably it is impossible,
to define _madness_, or to give a clearly marked indication of the
boundary line between sanity and insanity. Mental soundness is merged
in unsoundness by degrees of decadence which are so small as to be
practically inappreciable. It is with the mind-state which precedes the
development of recognized form of insanity the therapeutist and the
social philosopher are chiefly interested. Although in individual cases
the subject of mental derangement may, as the phrase runs, "go mad"
suddenly, speaking generally insanity is a symptom occurring in the
course of disease, and, commonly, not until the malady of which it is
the expression has made some progress. Those mental disturbances which
consist in a temporary aberration of brain function, and which are the
accidents of instability, rather than the effects of developed or even
developing neuroses, can scarcely be classed as insanity; although it is
true, and in an important sense, that these passing storms of excitement
or spells of moody depression may--acting reflexly on the cerebral and
nervous centers, as all mind-states and mind-movements react--exert a
morbific influence and lay the physical bases of mental disease.
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