Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1891 — Incipient Melancholy. [ARTICLE]

Incipient Melancholy.

Melancholia is a grave disease, especially becuuse of its strange and terrible tendency to induce suicide and homicide. As the patient’s reasoning processes seem to be perfectly clear, friends are seldom sufficiently on their guard. , The danger is always present, however, nor is the highest degree of intelligence or of moral worth any safeguard against it. The New York Medical Journal has a report of a lecture on the importance of recognizing melancholia in its earlier stage by Dr. Burnett, Jecturer in the Kansas City Medical College, of which report we make free use. “There is a marked difference between sadness and melancholia,” says Dr. Burnett. “In ordinary sadness there is a cause comprehensible to the individual, and he will seek to remove it. In melancholia there is no apparent cause; there is some implication of the higher faculties, and the patient is usually indifferent to his condition, surroundings and future progress.” There are several forms of the affection; Simple melancholia, melancholia agitata, melancholia attonita, and melancholia with stupor. The first two are the most difficult of recognition, and it is these that especially endanger the lives of the patient und his friends. The first important system of simple melancholia is sleeplessness. Another symptom, of the greatest importance, is a dull pain in the back of the neck, extending to the back of the head. It is only within a few years that this symptom has been recognized. The third symptom is depression of spirits, accompanied by slower mental movements and retarded speech and actions. When the first and the last symptoms are connected with pain in the neck the diagnosis may be considered as conclusive. —[Philadelphia Record.

There is an odd use of the word “slave” in western Pennyslyvonia, and perhaps in other parts of the United States, that should reach the great Dr. Murray of Oxford in time for insertion

in his ponderous new English dictionary. A fierce and dangerous dog is called a slave, apparently because he must be restrained of his liberty. The word has evidently passed beyond the Stage where it is questioned, for it is used in popular speech without hesitation.