Vanished in Hiawatha by Carla Joinson

Author:Carla Joinson [Joinson, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036090 History / United States / State & Local / Midwest (ia, Il, In, Ks, Mi, Mn, Mo, Nd, Ne, Oh, Sd, Wi), MED039000 Medical / History, SOC021000 Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies
ISBN: 9780803288249
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2016-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

14

Ripples in the Waters

Dr. Harry R. Hummer had every reason to be enthusiastic about the way things were going at the asylum in 1925. Whether he had initiated the exchange or simply replied to a request for information, Hummer wrote in January or early February to Dr. Emil Kraepelin, who wanted to conduct a study of “general paresis” in “Negroes” and Indians within the United States, Cuba, and Mexico. In his letter, Hummer stated that no other institution in the United States accepted only Indians—information that he surely thought would make Kraepelin anxious to visit Canton Asylum.

General paresis, known more commonly as general paralysis of the insane, occurred in patients with tertiary (late-stage) syphilis. Syphilis spirochetes growing in the body over time attacked various organs, leaving lesions that could manifest as paresis three to fifteen years after the initial infection.1 Though every syphilitic patient didn’t develop it, paresis’s symptoms were relentless and horrible. They usually began with forgetfulness and gradual disorientation and incoherence. Patients lost their memories, couldn’t define words, or forgot what had happened only moments earlier. At the same time, they began to lose their physical dexterity. Eventually, patients could become incontinent and paralyzed, unable to eat unaided or do more than babble.

Coupled with these physical symptoms were psychological ones. They, too, began innocuously, with perhaps depression and irritability, before moving on to intellectual deterioration, hallucinations, and delusions. Patients could be pitiably frightened, anxious, or restless; the disease’s progress was difficult to watch or treat, though patients were often oblivious to their condition toward its end.

Kraepelin described many forms and stages of paresis in his writings, but his most telling words concerned mortality for these unfortunate patients: “The prognosis of the disease is decidedly unfavorable. Death occurs within the vast majority of cases within two years.” 2

General paralysis of the insane was a serious health issue before penicillin began to be used as a treatment for syphilis; it was the seventh leading cause of death in New York State in 1914.3 This syphilitic syndrome affected perhaps 20 percent of patients in asylums and required lifelong caregiving—no one got well. (Kraepelin’s assessment that it proved fatal in two years only meant in its acute stages.) Involvement in researching the disease, especially with someone as eminent as Kraepelin, would be an enormously important and exciting opportunity.

Kraepelin believed that alcohol made syphilis worse and that it might even be the cause of the paresis that sometimes accompanied syphilis. Kraepelin also believed that freed slaves and “the North American Indians, who are well supplied with whiskey in their reservations,” were particularly susceptible to both alcohol and general paresis, with North American Indians suffering severely from paresis.4 All these assumptions were just theory, though, and he had to come to the United States and examine Indians with general paresis to prove any of it.

Dr. William A. White, superintendent at St. Elizabeths, subsequently received a letter from Kraepelin, who had been his professor in Munich. Kraepelin needed help in setting up visits to Canton Asylum, other Indian reservations, and St.

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