A text-book on mental diseases for the use of students and practitioners of medicine.

  • Kellogg, Theodore H.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A text-book on mental diseases for the use of students and practitioners of medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    employed in mental pathology, as it now is in neurology, for the classilication of various types of disease. To this very end the la- mented Meynert, among other noted collaborators, expended some of the best efforts of his genius. The physiological principle is the counterpart of the one just mentioned. Cerebral activity and psychical manifestation corre- spond in both health and disease. Functional activity of the health- ful brain is attended by normal mental manifestations, while the action of the diseased brain develops corresponding morbid psychical reactions. The nature of the functional cerebral process invariably determines the character of the objective psychical symptom. The physiological standard of mental activities would seem to be, there- fore, a true principle for the comparison and classification of the morbid variations of mental functions in Insanity. The new sci- ence of physiological psychology, it is to be trusted, will in due sea- son furnish some valuable principles of use in the nosology of In- sanity. The psychologist also looks expectantly to physiological chemistry for revelations as to biochemical tissue changes and re- sultant perversions of brain function and of corresponding morbid psychical manifestations. The combinative principle in the nosology of Insanity arises out of the fact that none of the principles heretofore described are adequate separately for the classification of the different varieties of mental alienation, so that an eclectic or combinative procedure becomes necessary. Classification is simply the orderly arrange- ment according to some given principles of the known facts of a science. When nothing but the objective symptoms was known ot- Insanity, the symptomatological principle was all that was required in its nosology, but with the advent of anatomical, physiological, etiological, and pathological facts, other principles of grouping the known data became essential. The limits of psychiatric science have become so extended, and the facts pertaining to it so numerous, that none but a combinative principle will suffice for a complete nosology of Insanity at the pres- ent day. This preliminary analysis of nosological principles will assist in the review of some of the chief classifications of authors which will now be presented in condensed form. Former accepted classifications will first be passed in review, as they are highly instructive, and have served as models for the more recent nosological schemes, in comparison with which they are