I have taken notice of the presence of this symptom in my Introductory Lecture upon the study of Medical Jurisprudence, in which I have mentioned, that seven-eighths of all the deranged patients in the Pennsylvania Hospital in the year 1811, had frequent pulse,[1] and that a pardon was granted to a criminal by the president of the United States, in the year 1794, who was suspected of counterfeiting madness, in consequence of its having been declared, by three physicians, that that symptom constituted an unequivocal mark of intellectual derangement.
The connection of this disease with the state of the pulse, has been further demonstrated by a most satisfactory experiment, made by Dr. Coxe, and related by him in his Practical Observations upon Insanity. He gave digitalis to a patient who was in a furious state of madness, with a pulse that beat 90 strokes in a minute. As soon
- ↑ This fact was ascertained, at my request, with great accuracy, by Dr. Frederick Vandyke. It is probable the pulsations of the arteries in the brain were preternaturally frequent in the brain in the few cases in which they were natural at the wrists. Dr. Cox, of Bristol, informs us that he had found the carotid artery to be full and tense, when the radial artery was weak and soft.
