Dr. Charles Hamilton Hughes, Alienist and Neurologist

Charles Hamilton Hughes (1839-1916) was the founder and editor of The Alienist and Neurologist. The journal was published from 1880 until his death in 1916, making him the sole editor for all 37 volumes. Remittances for subscriptions ($5 for four issues per year) and "articles or photographs from subscribers or friends and material acceptable for publication" were sent to his address in St. Louis.



What is an alienist?

An "alienist" is "one who treats mental diseases; a mental pathologist; a 'mad doctor'," according to The Oxford English Dictionary. The OED also defines "alienation" as in this sense as "mental alienation; withdrawal, loss, or derangement of mental faculties; insanity." The insane were thought estranged (alienated) from their normal faculties. The root of "alienist" is the Latin "alienare," to make strange. The word "alienist" came across the Channel to England from France where "aliene" meant insane and an "alieniste" was one who cared for the mentally ill: a psychiatrist.

What were Hughes's contributions to neurology and psychiatry? Notable excerpts from his obituary:

By the Death of the Founder of the Alienist and Neurologist one of the great pupils of the famed American School of Psychiatry of Rush, Stedman, Brigham, Gait and Ray has passed away. He had imbibed to the full the critical, judicial, radical, yet logically conservative, spirit of this school.

. . .

In 1880 he founded the Alienist and Neurologist, which soon assumed and kept a prominent position among medical journals. From the beginning it was recognized as of authority by the British Journal of Mental Science, the French Annales Medicopsychologiques, the Berlin Allgemeine Zeitschrift fur Psychiatric, [etc.]. Contributions to the Alienist and Neurologist were therefore widely quoted in Europe, even in circles hostile to America.

The personal contributions of Dr. Hughes to psychiatry and neurology were varied, valuable and original. His discovery of the virile reflex¹ was widely cited...

However, an obituary in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease was less flattering:

...He early maintained an interest in neurology in what was hardly more than a frontier trading post and where the existence of neurology was hardly dreamed of according of the canons of to-day. It was then a crude product but it was sincere and as he upheld it, it was a light in the wilderness. As St. Louis grew and began to feel itself this early lamp shone less brightly in contrast, but Dr. Hughes, although he may not have kept in touch with the latest advances, still maintained a vital interest and enthusiasm.

...He became widely known through the Alienist and Neurologist, which he founded in 1880 and which he made the medium for an open discussion of neurological and psychiatrical problems. It was received among European publications, though it never definitely stood for vigorous research and the vigorous pushing forward into, progressive lines which marks the neurology of to-day.

Mental Alienation

In The Neurocritic's previous post on Arithmomania, Hughes was credited with an article on "Autopsychorhythmia," or repetition psycho-neurosis (Hughes, 1901). He was clear to distinguish this phenomenon from the related conditions of echolalia (automatic repetition of another's speech) and coprolalia (involuntary uttering of obscenities, which is seen in only 10% of patients with Tourette's syndrome).

The constant repetition of a rhythmical movement in the mind, regardless of time or place or circumstance, and which an enfeebled volition cannot regulate to conform to the requirements of environment, characterises this symptom of brain overstrain and psycho-motor automatic impulse. Neuropathic and consequent psycho-motor neurasthenia appear to be at the bottom of this condition...

There's an element of "nervous breakdown" and mental exhaustion in some of the case reports, particularly in the patients who made good recoveries. For instance,

A gentleman of extensive business affairs who came to me on the verge of financial and business bankruptcy, but who is now after many years of health successful in a new but less harassing line of business, would continuously say to himself : "Too many irons in the fire, too many irons in the fire." His intellect was clear but his brain was jaded and unstable-in that stage of cerebrasthenia that so often precedes the final brain-break of insanity. The closing out and winding up of his business saved him for recuperation and another and less harassing and more successful career.

Conversely, other patients remained mired in insanity:

I have heard a chronic alcoholic repeat over and over through the day, "Little Bo-Peep, he lost his sheep, and doesn’t know where to find them," etc., and have known chronic lunatics who would repeat some long-ago-learned distich or rhyme or some insanely-constructed jingle of words in maudlin monotone, from the day’s beginning to the ending thereof, in all their waking hours, some of them ringing their peculiar song, like the dying swan, to the end of their unfortunate lives.

He considered autopsychorhythmia to be a brain disease, which seems obvious to us today, but he apparently needed to distinguish the centrally located pathology from peripheral motor abnormalies:

The pathological lesion of autopsychorhythmia is evidently in the mind area of the brain cortex.² It is truly transcortical and not localised exclusively in the speech area. It is a psychical and not purely psychomotor involvement-a psychical lesion shown in peculiarity of psychomotor expression.

Were there any treatments for such a malady? An 18 year old music student, a handsome and bright young lady, was prescribed a regimen of "rest, change of environment, cessation of study and piano practice, withdrawal from musical companionship, brain-tranquillising galvanisations, ether-menthol evaporating lotions to the head, chemical brain restraint, and pepsines and laxatives." Another charming young lady received "six weeks’ treatment with bromide of potassium, timely hypnotics, tonics, aloetic laxatives and gelsemium."

Oh, by the way, The Alienist and Neurologist accepted advertising...



Footnotes

¹ From Hughes (1891):

In a previous communication on this subject (vide Alienist and Neurologist for January, 1891), I have called attention to the fact that in a perfectly healthy individual, whose spinal cord is entirely normal, especially in its genitospinal center, placed supine on a couch without headrest, nude about the loins, the sheath of the penis made tense by clasping the foreskin with the left index finger and thumb at about the place of the frænum, and pulling it firmly toward the umbilicus, placing the middle, ring and little finger low down upon the dorsum of the virile organ, the dorsum or sides of the penis, near the perineal extremity, then sharply precussed, a quick and very sensible reflex motor response or retraction of the bulbo-cavernous portion will be felt to result from this sudden percussional impression...

Hughes thought he had discovered an important diagnostic sign that would be widely adopted, "worthy a place in clinical neurology with Westphal's paradoxical contraction, Erb's reaction of degeneration, or any of the hitherto recognized diagnostic reflexes, or clonuses." This never happened, fortunately.

² "...the mind area of the brain cortex" (wherever that may be). How quaint.

References

Hughes CH (1891). THE VIRILE AND OTHER NERVOUS REFLEXES. JAMA XVII(19):727-730.

Hughes CH. (1901). AUTOPSYCHORHYTHMIA OR REPETITION PSYCHO-NEUROSIS. MORBID RHYTHMIC FORMS OF AUTOMATICITY AND RHYTHMIC FORMS OF MENTAL ALIENATION. The Lancet, 157 (4051), 1124-1126 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(01)89412-5