Tag Archives: dementia praecox

Continued Futility

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Cottages 6 and 8, Epileptic Colony, Abilene, Texas

As much as Dr. Harry Hummer wanted to expand the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, he was seldom supported simultaneously by all the people he needed to help him. If he could get a commissioner of Indian Affairs on his side, the Secretary of the Interior wouldn’t help him. If he could get a government inspector to recommend expansion, he couldn’t get the commissioner to go along, and so forth. One of the expansion/improvement projects Hummer most wanted was an epileptic cottage. At any given time, approximately 20% of his patients were epileptics, and they created a great deal of work and need for oversight. Hummer wanted to keep all these patients in a dedicated facility to make their care more manageable.  In 1922, Chief Medical Inspector, R. E. Newberne, recommended both expansion and an epileptic cottage, saying that additional land could possibly be paid for “from the sale of alfalfa and hogs.” This suggestion surely came from Hummer rather than his own analysis.

At the time of Newberne’s inspection, from a total of 90 patients, 21 had some form of epilepsy, 25 had dementia praecox, (later called schizophrenia by Dr. Emil Kraepelin) and 22 were imbeciles. Hummer also had three patients under 10 years of age, 9 patients between the ages of 10 and 19, and four who were between 70 and 79. Though it would seem that caring for the children and elderly would also be demanding, Hummer did not seem to refer to their special needs when speaking to inspectors or to the commissioner.

Emil Kraepelin

Dementia Praecox Patients, from Emil Kraepelin's textbook, 1899 edition

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Emil Kraepelin, courtesy National Library of Medicine

Emil Kraepelin, courtesy National Library of Medicine

Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) led the way for psychiatric research in the nineteenth century. Educated and trained in Germany, Kraepelin studied mental disorders and eventually developed a system of classifying mental illness that took into account a condition’s onset, course, and prognosis.

Kraepelin grouped conditions/illnesses by patterns of symptoms, rather than by the symptoms themselves. He called this a “clinical” rather than “symptomatic” view. Kraepelin’s distinction was important, because almost any single symptom could be seen across a broad spectrum of mental conditions. Classifying by pattern, (or syndrome) rather than symptoms led to a simpler and more uniform diagnostic system.

Kraepelin identified the pathological basis of Alzheimer’s disease,  identified schizophrenia (though he named it dementia praecox), and manic depression.

Illustration from Emil Kraepelin's Book

Illustration from Emil Kraepelin's Book, 1907

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What’s In a Name?

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Woman Suffering From Acute Melancholia, 1869

Woman Suffering From Acute Melancholia, 1869, courtesy Wellcome Library, London

Alienists categorized the various psychiatric problems they saw, just as psychiatrists do today. Some terms can be understood fairly easily by the modern researcher; melancholia meant depression, for instance. Other terms are not quite so readily translated or understood today. Here are a few diagnoses for the patients at Canton Asylum for Insane Indians:

Omudis (Chippewa) – imbecility, demented, “mischeivous” (original spelling)

Red Cloud (Sioux) – dementia praecox (this is known today as schizophrenia)

Cleto Tafoya (Pueblo) – dementia praecox, paranoid type, and dazed religious spells

BlueSky (Chippewa) – circular insanity

Fred Tatsup (Bannock) – galloping paresis (paresis is a partial paralysis due to syphilis; “galloping” means a rapid progression of the condition)

Dementia Praecox Patient

Dementia Praecox Patient

German Psychiatric Book, Eugen Bleuler

German Psychiatric Book, Eugen Bleuler

Al Capone, Suffered Syphilitic Dementia

Al Capone, Suffered Syphilitic Dementia

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