Diseases of the nervous system : a text-book of neurology and psychiatry / by Smith Ely Jellife and William A. White.

  • Jelliffe, Smith Ely, 1866-1945.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the nervous system : a text-book of neurology and psychiatry / by Smith Ely Jellife and William A. White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    For practical purposes and for the reasons stated the work has therefore been divided into three parts dealing respectively with the vegetative, the sensori-motor, and the psychic levels, the reactions in all of which come to pass through the medium of the nervous system. Man is not only a metabolic apparatus, accurately adjusted to a marvelous efficiency through the intricacies of the vegetative neuro¬ logical mechanisms, nor do his sensori-motor functions make him solely a feeling, moving animal, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, conquering time and space by the enhancement of his sensory possi¬ bilities and the magnification of his motor powers; nor yet is he exclu¬ sively a psychical machine, which by means of a masterly symbolic handling of the vast horde of realities about him has given him almost unlimited powers. He is all three, and a neurology of today that fails to interpret nervous disturbances in terms of all three of these levels, takes too narrow a view of the function of that master spirit in evolu¬ tion, the nervous system. For these reasons the treatise has been called primarily a work on the diseases of the nervous system rather than two books, one on neurology and one on psychiatry, which would perpetuate a distinction which the authors believe to be wholly artificial. S. E. J. W. A. W. New York and Washington, 1915.