| Abstrakt: |
San Francisco, Cal., May 23, 1896. TO THE EDITOR: —The announcement in your issue of May 16 (quoted from La Semaine Médicale), of two cases of mania cured at Montpellier by injections of serum from a recovered maniac, suggests boundless expectations from sero-therapy and other new agents. It is presumptive that insanity is a germ disease, and that bacteriologists will soon differentiate its specific microörganism. At present we can only speculate whether homicidal and suicidal mania, kleptomania, pyromania, dementia, etc., are due to the same or separate microbes; but obviously one ought to choose cultures from cases resembling the particular type of insanity under treatment.We may anticipate also the early discovery that the vices of gambling, drunkenness, unchastity and mendacity (already supposed to be evidence of mental deterioration) are due to specific microbes and amenable to sero-therapy. The only difficulty would be in determining whether the supply be derived |
