JARGONIZING
JARGONI’ZING is a phenomenon observed chiefly in acute mania; it consists in the utterance of uncouth and unintelligible sounds, which may resemble articulate words, or be little more than harsh ejaculations and bellowings. This symptom must not be confounded with those imitations of foreign tongues or provincial idioms, or the perversions of the faculty of language characteristic of mania and other forms of alienation, as these sounds are not intended to be, nor to appear, the vehicles of thought or manifestations of feeling. They stand in the same relation to the excitement and violence, as the rapid motion, the furious gesticulation, and the tendency to injure and destroy everything that is seemly and harmonious. The tone in which they are uttered is generally harsh and defiant, because intense passion thrills through every muscle, through those of the vocal apparatus as well as of the arm raised to strike. Jargonizing is, in all probability, involuntary. It occurs at the commencement or crisis of mania, when the power to control the ideas and to regulate motion is most impaired. It may, however, be the result of volition, so far as that the individual desires and determines to speak, but fails from the rapidity or intensity of his emotions to call into action, and co-ordinate the organs engaged in articulation. Such utterances maybe heard in soliloquy, if the phrase may be used, and during sleep. The feature has been accepted as pathognomic of mania. It has, however, been noticed in the delirium of certain stages of fever and of drunkenness, which are mental states depending upon blood-poisons. During periods of profound abstraction, similar sounds are said to have proceeded from the lips of sane and healthy men. In all these instances, the natural operation of the will would appear to be enfeebled or suspended.