Editorial Comment 7/16: On editing

Editorial Comment:  On editing

My editorial this week was superseded over the course of the weekend.  It became clear that consultation was needed, and in a profession that is founded on the consultative process, that is no light matter. So I put it to bed.  Therapeutic coma, if you will.

That left me with a brain full of dendritic tangles, from which I despaired of summoning any inspiration; and this caused me to pick up a book.  I have an original copy of Benjamin Rush’s “Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind,” published in 1812. To read it is to wonder at times if Dr. Rush was not being facetious in addressing certain topics. But it was with profound anxiety and no sense of facetiousness that I read the following:

“The causes which induce intellectual derangement, by acting upon the body through the medium of the mind, are of a direct and indirect nature. The causes which act directly upon the understanding are… the frequent and rapid transition of the mind from one subject to another. It is said booksellers have sometimes become deranged from this cause. The debilitating effects of these sudden transitions upon the mind, are sensibly felt after reading a volume of reviews or magazines. The brain in these cases is deprived of the benefit of habit, which prevents fatigue to a certain extent, from all the exercises of the body and mind, when they are confined to single objects.” 

Rush goes on to suggest that this way lies mania, or at least flight of ideas. “It is worthy of notice that this cause of madness accords exactly with a symptom of one of its forms, and that is, a constant and rapid transition of the mind to a variety of unrelated subjects.”

We are doctors, and we know to look after each other.  Across two centuries, my colleague Benjamin calls out to me, and says, "Bill, put the book down. Get some lunch."

- W. Haning, MD, DFAPA, DFASAM