The psychoneuroses and their treatment by psychotherapy / by Professor J. Dejerine and Dr. E. Gauckler, authorized translation by Smith Ely Jelliffe.

  • Dejerine, J. (Jules), 1849-1917.
Date:
[1913], [©1913]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The psychoneuroses and their treatment by psychotherapy / by Professor J. Dejerine and Dr. E. Gauckler, authorized translation by Smith Ely Jelliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    CHAPTER I. FUNCTIONAL MANIFESTATIONS OF THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. All of the successive acts of digestion are, to a certain degree, started going by an antecedent phenomenon, which at the outset is apparently peripheral, but which is accompanied by more or less vivid mental representations, which are known as hunger or appetite. It would perhaps be useful, in order to be exact, to make a distinction between these two words, hunger and appetite. They are not abso- lutely synonymous. The word hunger expresses some sort of organic need of nourishment. The word appetite expresses rather the psychic idea of nourishment. One can have an appetite without being, properly speaking, hungry. The appetite may be awakened by all sorts of purely psychic sensations, such as an odor, a savory taste, etc., ... as well as association of ideas, bearing on the time, or on places which recall the idea of food, and lead to appetite. As a matter of fact, from the point of view which interests us, the two terms may be used indifferently, and the only thing to which we attach importance is the knowledge that if this first phenomenon of digestion may, so to speak, be an outside appeal, it may also be largely dependent upon the intervention of the psychic mechanism. Disturbances of appetite will be the first which we shall pass in review. We shall then study a whole series of functional manifestations, which may be produced at different stages of digestion. Disturbances op Appetite. These disturbances may be quantitative or qualitative. We shall take up successively: A. Mental anorexia. Quantitative disturbance of the appetite due to lack of food. B. Quantitative disturbance of the appetite due to excess. C. Elective anorexias, or qualitative disturbances of the appetite. A. Mental Anorexia.—It sometimes happens that a physician has patients—they are more apt to be women—whose appearance is truly shocking. Their eyes are brilliant, Their cheeks are hollow, and their cheek bones seem to protrude through the skin. Their withered breasts hang from the walls of their chest. Every rib stands out. Their shoulder-blades appear to be loosened from their frame. Every vertebra shows through the skin. The abdominal wall sinks in below the floating ribs and forms a hollow like a basin. Their thighs and the calves of their legs are reduced to a skeleton. One would say it was the picture of an immured nun, such as the old masters have portrayed. These