hce_tcu
114年
英文
第 35 題
📖 題組：
What we recognize today as depression was, in the Victorian era, popularly known as melancholia or melancholy. Like depression, melancholy ranged in seriousness from mild, temporary bouts of sadness or “low spirits” to longer, more extreme episodes, characterized by insomnia, lack of appetite, and suicidal thoughts. While symptoms of melancholy were usually easy to recognize, medical opinions often differed on what it was that caused the condition. As a result, treatment plans for the melancholic patient varied widely. Below, we look at a few Victorian era medical opinions on the symptoms and causes, and treatments of melancholy. According to Dr. Wooster Beach, the patient afflicted with melancholy shunned society and courted solitude, was fearful and low-spirited. Many medical practitioners found it useful to divide melancholy into categories by symptom. This served to separate the more severe forms of melancholy, such as those accompanied by violent outbursts, mania, or delusions, from the more ordinary forms of melancholy in which the patient was merely reclusive and sad. In his 1871 book Insanity and Its Treatment, Dr. G. Fielding Blandford classified melancholy as being either acute or subacute. While Yeoman went a step further, dividing melancholy into four separate types: Gloomy Melancholy, Restless Melancholy, Mischievous Melancholy, and Self-Complacent Melancholy. Melancholy was often accompanied by physical symptoms. Many of these were a direct result of poor diet, lack of activity, and too much time spent closed up indoors. Much like depression today, melancholy could result from a particular situation, such as a death in the family or a professional, financial, or romantic disappointment. Melancholy could also result from physical illness. According to Beach, it could be brought on by “dyspepsia, suppressed evacuations, intemperance, and injuries of the cranium.” Melancholy could also set in for what appeared to be no reason at all. Beach stated that this sort of melancholy was often the result of “an hereditary disposition” or a “melancholic temperament.” While in the 1879 book Clinical Medicine, Dr. Austin Flint declared that when not attributable to an adequate cause (a death or a loss) and when not linked to a symptom of dyspepsia, alcoholism, or other recognizable illness, melancholy should be regarded as “a neuropathic affection” or a diseased mind. Unfortunately for Victorian doctors and their melancholy patients, there were no antidepressant drugs available in the nineteenth century. Instead, doctors generally treated melancholy by recommending specialized diets and regimens of rest and relaxation. Beach took a more modern approach, declaring that “in the treatment of melancholy, attention must be directed to the mind as well as the body.” To this end, he advised that the patient should take exercise in the open air, talk with cheerful friends, and enjoy pleasant scenery. Some Victorian doctors went further with their treatments, advising their melancholy patients to drink alcohol, to take morphia, or even (if they were single) to get married and start a family. For example, Blandford recommended a diet which featured alcohol at almost every meal, followed by a dose of chloral or morphia at night to help the melancholic patient sleep. In some cases, Victorian era doctors advised that patients suffering from melancholy be committed to an asylum. This was mainly to prevent the patient from harming himself since, as Blandford stated, “every patient of this kind is to be looked upon as suicidal.” While wealthier patients could afford to hire attendants to watch over them at home, poor patients in need of supervision had little choice but to turn to an asylum.
What we recognize today as depression was, in the Victorian era, popularly known as melancholia or melancholy. Like depression, melancholy ranged in seriousness from mild, temporary bouts of sadness or “low spirits” to longer, more extreme episodes, characterized by insomnia, lack of appetite, and suicidal thoughts. While symptoms of melancholy were usually easy to recognize, medical opinions often differed on what it was that caused the condition. As a result, treatment plans for the melancholic patient varied widely. Below, we look at a few Victorian era medical opinions on the symptoms and causes, and treatments of melancholy. According to Dr. Wooster Beach, the patient afflicted with melancholy shunned society and courted solitude, was fearful and low-spirited. Many medical practitioners found it useful to divide melancholy into categories by symptom. This served to separate the more severe forms of melancholy, such as those accompanied by violent outbursts, mania, or delusions, from the more ordinary forms of melancholy in which the patient was merely reclusive and sad. In his 1871 book Insanity and Its Treatment, Dr. G. Fielding Blandford classified melancholy as being either acute or subacute. While Yeoman went a step further, dividing melancholy into four separate types: Gloomy Melancholy, Restless Melancholy, Mischievous Melancholy, and Self-Complacent Melancholy. Melancholy was often accompanied by physical symptoms. Many of these were a direct result of poor diet, lack of activity, and too much time spent closed up indoors. Much like depression today, melancholy could result from a particular situation, such as a death in the family or a professional, financial, or romantic disappointment. Melancholy could also result from physical illness. According to Beach, it could be brought on by “dyspepsia, suppressed evacuations, intemperance, and injuries of the cranium.” Melancholy could also set in for what appeared to be no reason at all. Beach stated that this sort of melancholy was often the result of “an hereditary disposition” or a “melancholic temperament.” While in the 1879 book Clinical Medicine, Dr. Austin Flint declared that when not attributable to an adequate cause (a death or a loss) and when not linked to a symptom of dyspepsia, alcoholism, or other recognizable illness, melancholy should be regarded as “a neuropathic affection” or a diseased mind. Unfortunately for Victorian doctors and their melancholy patients, there were no antidepressant drugs available in the nineteenth century. Instead, doctors generally treated melancholy by recommending specialized diets and regimens of rest and relaxation. Beach took a more modern approach, declaring that “in the treatment of melancholy, attention must be directed to the mind as well as the body.” To this end, he advised that the patient should take exercise in the open air, talk with cheerful friends, and enjoy pleasant scenery. Some Victorian doctors went further with their treatments, advising their melancholy patients to drink alcohol, to take morphia, or even (if they were single) to get married and start a family. For example, Blandford recommended a diet which featured alcohol at almost every meal, followed by a dose of chloral or morphia at night to help the melancholic patient sleep. In some cases, Victorian era doctors advised that patients suffering from melancholy be committed to an asylum. This was mainly to prevent the patient from harming himself since, as Blandford stated, “every patient of this kind is to be looked upon as suicidal.” While wealthier patients could afford to hire attendants to watch over them at home, poor patients in need of supervision had little choice but to turn to an asylum.
According to the article, which of the following statements is TRUE?
- A Melancholy was characterized solely by excessive energy and overactive behavior.
- B Doctors in the Victorian era recommended antidepressant medications as the primary treatment for melancholy.
- C Victorian-era doctors often advised patients to engage in solitary confinement to recover from melancholy.
- D Melancholy could result from various causes, including physical illness, personal loss, and hereditary disposition.
思路引導 VIP
當我們試圖找出維多利亞時代的人們如何看待這種情緒疾病時，請在文章中尋找作者列舉了哪些具體的情況（例如家庭變故、身體狀況或基因）會導致憂鬱？這些原因是否可以歸納成一個廣泛的結論呢？
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AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
恭喜你精準地鎖定了正確答案！這題考驗的是細膩的資訊檢索與整合能力，而你展現了非常優異的閱讀品質。在文章第三段中，作者詳細羅列了當時醫界公認的憂鬱（Melancholy）多重成因，明確包含心理打擊（如家屬過世）、生理疾病（如消化不良、頭顱損傷），甚至是先天遺傳（hereditary disposition）。你能夠在眾多醫學術語中正確篩選出這些關鍵資訊，顯示你對文本的掌握十分紮實。
文本細節的辨析與難度關鍵
這道題目的難度切入點在於考生是否能耐心比對選項與原文的細微差異，而非僅憑直覺。例如選項 (B) 提到的「抗憂鬱藥物」在當時根本不存在，而選項 (C) 的「隔離」也與文中所提倡的「與朋友交談、接觸戶外」完全相反。這題具備良好的鑑別度，能篩選出能夠排除「干擾誘答項」並回歸文本佐證的學生。你沒有被這些看似專業但與文意不符的選項誤導，代表你的邏輯推導與細節比對能力非常成熟。