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Show Adv ice on Your Health By Morris Fiihbein, Editor, Journal American Medical Astociatioa A second type of mental disease t which is now widely recognized is the condition known as paresis, sometimes called dementia paralytica. para-lytica. In thia form there has usually been an Invasion of the tissues of the brain by the organism organ-ism which causes syphilis. The damage done to the brain tissues is. however, considerably less than is apparent in the breakdown break-down of the physical activities of the body and also in the mental reactions. Another common form of mental men-tal disturbance is the Insanity. of adolescence, which is now also called dementia praecox. It is this form which apparently Is beginning begin-ning to be amenable to treatment by the newly discovered insulin shock method. Finally, there are other forms of mental breakdown associated with chronic poisoning or damage to the tissues by alcohol, lead and similar poisons. As a part of tha great mental problem we recognize recog-nize thoaa cases of mental defect which occur In children at birth and which are due to failure of certain portions of the brain to develop de-velop properly. ' possible In diseases like diphtheria, diphthe-ria, scarlet fever or whooping cough, in which the symptoms are almoet Invariably the same. The raaes in these classifications, however, constitute most of the reasons for which patients are admitted to hospitals for the mentally men-tally insane. Those with dementia praecox, maniac depressive psychoses, hardening of the arteries in the brain, senile dementia, paresis and alcoholic psychoses' constitute 73 per cent of the patients who are permanently kept in hospitals for mental disease. Looking Ahead Charles F. Kettering, to whose scientific resesrehes American Industry owes an incalculable debt, made a talk the other day that struck us as one of the most truly optimistic utterances la a long time. Hia theme waa that all tha advances ad-vances of scientists and industrialists indus-trialists to date, great as they have been, are barely a step toward to-ward what can be accomplished. He was answering though he didn't say so the people who moan that everything has been invented, ' that our natural resources re-sources are running out and that we face a future of drab stagnation stagna-tion without fine new opportunities opportuni-ties or even work enough to keep everybody busy. He told of a conversation with engineering friends who wondered what could There are many finer classifications classifica-tions of insanity as well. For instance, in-stance, we hear much of the condition con-dition called paranoia. This refers re-fers to people who have fixed suspicions sus-picions and ideas ot persecution which are. of course, not based on any actual truth, but Instead on a perverted interpretation of events that have occurred. Quite frequently a person with paranoia seems to be brilliant, and. in fact of a higher order of intelligence than the average human hu-man being. There are, however, caaes of paranoia which occur aa complications of dementia praecox. prae-cox. These people have particular Ideas of grandeur or of persecution, persecu-tion, aad when the paranoia occurs oc-curs in dementia praecox there la a steady deterioration of tha human hu-man being, whereas the case of paranoia, which is not a complication compli-cation of dementia praecox, may show little deterioration as ths patient grows older. Another type of disturbance Is the condition called Involutional melancholia. Such cases are not rare. In these cases there Is a tendency to aevere depression which occurs in middle life or later, the outstanding symptoms being Inability to sleep, constant uneasiness and a tendency by the persons concerned to condemn themselves unnecessarily for all sorts of weaknesses and disabilities. disabili-ties. Obviously these- classifications are not as definitely fixed as ia j be done when the sources of gasoline gaso-line are exhausted. "What is gasoline?" Mr. Ket- ' trring asked them. The reply waa "Petroleum." "Well, what is petroleum?" "The product of decaying vegetable vege-table matter." "How was the vegetable matter mat-ter produced?" "By tha growth of plants." "What made the planta grow?" "The rays of the sun." "And there," said the scientist "you have it. We run our automobiles auto-mobiles now by the stored-up radiant ra-diant heat of the sun. All we need is to take out a few steps here and there to run them by ray-transmitted power direct. I haven't the slightest idea what we are going to do when the supply sup-ply of oil runs out but we are going to do something long before It runs out. "If we scientists snd Industrialists Industrial-ists could get out of our minds the Idea that we know very much about anything, and realize that the whole thing is ahrad of ua, then. I think, we would have a shortage of labor in a brief tine." New York World-Telegraaa. 4 |