MENTAL DISEASES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 32, 8 February 1927, Page 5

MENTAL DISEASES

VALUE OF RESEARCH

WORK IN THE LABORATORY (By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Port.") DUNEDIN, This Day.

An address was delivered at the Aus-. tralian Medical Congress yesterday in the section of neurology and psyehiatory, by Dr. Oliver Latham (Sydney). He pointed out the great advantages which accrued from the development oH laboratory work in connection with mental diseases. This work owed its existence to the late Sir Frederick Mott, who Bad inaugurated laboratories under the London County Council at Claybury in England. Sir Frederick Mott had devoted his energies and genius to the study of the changes in the brain in insanity and had done an immense amount of work, more particularly with general paralysis of the insane. In Australia, the same class of work had been started some fifteen years ago, and the late Dr. Fronde Flashman had been appointed the first pathologist to the department of. mental hospitals. After Dr. Flashman's death, Dr. Latham had taken on this work... He also referred to the development of the. work under Eows and Kulchitsky. Many others in Germany, France, and England had also contributed to it. Sir Frederick Mott's idea had been to establish in connection with every hospital for the insane a pathological department, where the structural conditions of the brain after death could be studied and where biochemical work could be carried out during the patients' lives. In New South Wales they were including in the course of instruction to medical students teaching in these laboratories, while. more advanced work was given to candidates for the special diploma of psychiatry. Dr. Latham outlined the research work -which had ;been conducted in his laboratory, and referred to the stimulus that the researches of Honner and Boyle on the sympathetic system had given. They had paid much attention to the changes in the nervous system in: encephalitis lethargica, the so-called sleeping sickness of the war. Much work had also been carried'out-in connection with disseminated sclerosis, a common nervous disease of an inevitably fatal nature. Drl Latham claimed that the duties of the pathologist were to aid the psychiatrist in his problems, to help the psychologist to realise how much the mental functions : depended on the activities of the individual units within the brain, and to accumulate knowledge in connection with the various forms of insanity in order that they might be better understood.

Drs. G. Prior, and A. L. Kinna= (both of Parramatta,, New South Wales), described the condition of a of patients in the Parramatta Hospital for the Insane, in whom sepsis associated with glandular deficiency was obviously the cause of the mental condition. In these cases, in which the sepsis was the more important of the two causes, tlie condition cleared up rapidly under vaccine treatment. Under certain circumstances they had been able to treat epilepsy with success in this way. Dr. H. M. North (New South Wales) also dealt with the same subject. He examined the claims that had been made by Cotton and others that 80 per cent, of the patients suffering. from mental disease due in part to sepsis could be cured. He had .found, however, that in the majority the recovery did not last longer than one year, and he suspected that in some institutions the rate of recovery in these case 3 was lower , than 40 per cent. He pointed out thatfrom the work of Kopeloff and Kirby it was quite evident that the relation between focal' sepsis .. and' functional mental disease was very slender, if it existed at -all: -He thought it would be wrong to accept the contention that nothing further should be done and that the hypothesis of a septic causation of insanity should be thrown overboard. He thouglit that more work should* be carried out to ascertain whether or not there was a specific toxin which acted as a. cause of these functional disturbances.

Dr. g. J. Minogue (New South Wales) dealt more particularly with glandular disturbance as a cause of certain forms of insanity. He claimed that as the result of recent study it was possible to make an accurate prognosis as to the result of treatment of insanity in 90 per cent, of their patients. He admitted that many of their patients had recovered after,, thyroia treatment who might have recovered without. ; Ho himself was very sceptical in regard to the claim that the causes of insanity had been discovered. s

In the course of the discussion Dr. Macpherson threw cold water on the work in the laboratories associated with mental hospitals.. He was very doubtful whether any material benefit had accrued to the patients, and he was convinced that the result; of -glandular treatment had been uniformly disappointing. . ■ . ■ . '•

Dr. H. Maudsley (Melbourne) held the opposite view. He was convinced that very excellent results had been obtained in regard to the treatment of general paralysis of the insane. Although it was too early, to speak of the ultimate result, the treatment by inoculation of the patients . with the virus of .malaria was giving very promising results.

Dr. St. L. Gribben (Auckland) pointed out that in' Edinburgh they were getting excellent results in patients with general paralysis of the insane by malaria treatment. I