Dyce Sombre's 'Lunacy'.

Dyce Sombre lost his kingdom when it was confiscated by the British East India company. He, however, was very rich. He travelled to England married an upper class woman.

Heredity of Schizophrenia in India: A 1928 debate.

Shaw, a British psychiatrist working in India, observed that the incidence of Schizophrenia was higher among a community of Parsis as compared to other ethnic groups. He published his findings in two British journals. The paper drew responses from two other psychiatrists.

Medical education in ancient India.

The article being submitted concerns medical education in the antiquity. A lot is known about how physicians were trained in ancient Greece. Most of us a familiar with Hippocrates and his contribution to Medicine.

Madness and Crime: A Non-Western Historical Perspective.

It is generally acknowledged that the insanity defense has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy. There are references to the insanity defense in the works of Plato and Homer. Little, though, is known about how non-Western cultures dealt with the insane who commit crimes.

The madness of Dyce Sombre.

Dyce Sombre was an Indian prince who lost his kingdom but inherited a vast fortune. He arrived in England and became a member of the Parliament. His wife's family had him declared as a lunatic.

The mysterious illness of dyce sombre.

The alleged "madness" of the Anglo-Indian prince known as Dyce Sombre (1808-1851) has been attributed to anti-Asian prejudice, biased observations, and insensitivity to ethno-cultural variations in behavior. However, whereas all these factors may have contributed to misdiagnosis and mistreatment, there is compelling evidence pointing to an "organic" explanation for Dyce Sombre's aberrant behavior. We posit that the interaction of drug toxicity and possible central nervous system infection were primarily responsible for Dyce Sombre's clinical symptoms.

Clinical and personality profiles and survival in patients with COPD.

Objective: To assess the relationship of personality and clinical characteristics with survival in patients with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Design: Prospective double-blind study.

Setting: Outpatient clinic of a teaching Veterans Affairs Hospital in central New York.

Psychiatric nosology and taxonomy in ancient India.

This article considers the nosology and taxonomy of psychiatric disorders in Sushruta Samhita, an ancient Indian treatise on medicine. Some implications of this treatise for modern psychiatry are discussed.

Bipolar affective disorder. II. EEG, neuropsychological, and clinical correlates of CT abnormality.

Since the clinical significance of CT abnormalities found in bipolar patients remains obscure, we studied 26 DSM-III bipolar patients who had specific CT abnormalities (third ventricle enlargement, and hyperdensity of the caudate, thalamus, anterior frontal white matter, and right temporal lobe) on numerous parameters such as EEG, the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery, premorbid personality adjustment, family history of affective disorder, positive and negative symptoms, employment history, and response to lithium carbonate treatment. None of these measures could differentiate between the CT abnormal and CT normal subgroups. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Bipolar affective disorder. I. Comprehensive quantitative computed tomography.

Based on clinical similarities with schizophrenics and previous computed tomography (CT) studies that found distinct structural abnormalities in the brains of bipolar patients, we evaluated 26 DSM-III bipolar patients and 22 controls by CT, using quantitative measures of ventricular and sulcal size and of cerebral parenchymal density. Third ventricle size was increased, as was periventricular and cortical density. Comparison is made with results found in other psychotic conditions and the possible etiopathological significance discussed.

Normal cerebral asymmetry in bipolar patients.

Reversal of normal cerebral asymmetry has been reported to be more frequent in children with higher cortical dysfunction and in schizophrenics, in whom it has clinical significance as well. As there are few studies of bipolar patients, we attempted to determine if significant reversal would be found in a clearly diagnosed sample of bipolar patients. As technical differences may account for varying results, we used two previously reported methods and a modified technique.

Stressful life events and psychiatric hospitalization of mentally retarded patients.

The authors compared the type and number of life events experienced by 19 mentally retarded patients and 19 nonretarded control subjects in the month before their admission to the same unit of a state mental hospital. The retarded patients had exhibited fewer changes in eating and other personal habits. On admission they presented fewer signs of intrapsychic disturbance but more of self-destruction or aggression.

A psychosocial study of early-onset bipolar disorder.

A 4-year study of 48 bipolar subjects and matched controls looked closely at the psychosocial histories of an early-onset subsample. A significant majority of these biographies include five distinct features: treatment as the special child of the family, high achievement in school, evidence of symptomatology in childhood, first episode soon after leaving home, and characteristic content in later symptomatology. The authors suggest that the findings provide a replication of a well-known study and that they further specify the increasingly evident differences between early- and late-onset bipolar patients.

Life events and early and late onset of bipolar disorder.

Forty-six subjects with bipolar disorder and their relatives and friends were interviewed in depth about life events preceding the first and the latest episode of the subject's affective illness. Twenty years of age was the cutting point for dividing the sample into early- and late-onset groups. The late-onset group reported the occurrence of significantly more stressful life events before the first and before the latest episode of affective illness than the early-onset group did.