Psychiatry : a clinical treatise on diseases of the fore-brain : based upon a study of its structure, functions, and nutrition. Pt. 1 / by Theodor Meynert ; translated (under authority of the author) by B. Sachs.

Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Psychiatry : a clinical treatise on diseases of the fore-brain : based upon a study of its structure, functions, and nutrition. Pt. 1 / by Theodor Meynert ; translated (under authority of the author) by B. Sachs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    a slight change in the number and character of the inmates, for the Psychiatric Clinic of the Vienna General Hospital. My present “clinic” is the only State Insane Asylum of Austria, though its quarters are not in keeping with its importance. Fourteen to sixteen hundred patients are received annually into this clinic, and of these, only those who are inhabitants of Lower Austria are soon dismissed and assigned to other institutions. It was the study of such a vast number of cases which convinced me that many cases could not be properly classified according to the old rules and within the artificial types of mental diseases. The many variations from these types appeared not only to favor, but actually to compel, the establishment of a natural system of classification. During the interval that elapsed between the inception and completion of my book, I have seen reason to depart in some respects from the account here given of the anatomy of the brain. I have not adopted any new method, but have elaborated with greater care the old cleavage (Abfaserung) method of my prede- cessors,—a laborious method, which has been unduly crowded out by the study of brain-sections. The former method supplies us not only with a key to the complexities of brain-sections, but enables us also to extend our knowledge of the minute anatomy of the brain beyond the information we can obtain from micro- scopical sections. From the notes to be appended to the end of this work,1 the reader will gather wherein my views have been necessarily modified or supplemented by the investigations of other authors and my latest researches. The most important results which I have recently arrived at are in regard to the cortical and ganglionic fibres of origin of the pespcduncnli(crusta), and the connection of these fibres with the pyramids. My dissent from the adoption of a common system of cranial measurements, to which I agreed, at Ranke’s suggestion, is explained by the fact that the chapter 1 on pathological craniology was written as early as 1880. In view of the necessity of starting from anatomical facts, I have endeavored, in every case, not only to give due weight to the structure of the brain as the fundamental basis for the various forms of disease, but have endeavored, with the same end in view, to insist upon and to explain every visible symptom ex- hibited by the patient. This refers to the consideration of move- In Part II. of this edition.