268 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



REMAKES UPON THE TREATMENT OF PARESIS 

 Charles F. Read, M. D., State Alienist — Chicago 



On June 30, 1923, there were 920 cases of general 

 paralysis of the insane enrolled in the various state 

 hospitals of Illinois. Of the 4770 patients admitted dur- 

 ing the year of 1922-1923 for the first time to any insti- 

 tution, 560 were suffering from this same disease. Of 

 the 1919 patients who died during this same year, 425 

 were cases of general paralysis. The average hospital 

 life of patients admitted with this disease and who 

 die in our state hospital is 1.11 years. Although over 500 

 patients were discharged as recovered, from the various 

 state hospitals of Illinois during this same year, there 

 was not one case of paresis — a shorter term for this same 

 disease — among them. 



The statistics of the state of Illinois are time for those 

 of the United States in general, and even the enormous 

 aggregate thus revealed does not account for all the rav- 

 ages produced by this dread disease. Many patients 

 doubtless die in private institutions or in the home be- 

 fore their conduct has become so bad as to necessitate 

 hospitalization- Upon the average they are men in early 

 middle life, men who have arrived at the most product- 

 ive time of life, and have assumed the responsibilities of 

 wife and children. In a recent study made by a social 

 service worker in the East, it was found that the major- 

 ity of the families of these patients became dependent 

 upon charity or the earnings of the wife and mother who 

 was forced to go to work when her husband went into 

 the hospital. 



Of the 560 patients admitted in 1922-1923 only 95 were 

 women, thus leaving 465 men representing, at a valua- 

 tion of $10,000 each, a loss to the state of Illinois of 

 $4,650,000 — aside from the cost of maintaining them in 

 an institution for a year and a month, an expenditure 

 which would run the total figure well up to $5,000,000.00! 



This is a problem with which we have to deal in our 

 state hospitals — a problem of the end results of syph- 

 ilitic infections dating back from 10 to 20 years prior to 

 the patients commitment as insane. It is said that 



