” nervous disorders ” is a title which covers a vast field, a field so extensive that to deal with it in any comprehensive and detailed Manner within the limits of a single lecture is impossible. It is, moreover, a profoundly specialized field, asking for its adequate knowledge of theoretical and practical understanding of medicine, which I cannot assume my present public to possess.
This “physiological perception,” as we may call it, still holds its place, but its power is no significant positive because during the past fifty years, yet another Plan has got into being. In this term, psychology has freed itself from the philosophies, ethics and other alien associates which formerly hindered its expansion, and has continued into real science.
As a consequence of this brief factual investigation, we find, therefore, that there are two representations from the origin of reasoning and nervous disorders which at present grip the field, the “physiological” and the “psychological” According to the first, and the events are to be understood as the result of a chain of physical or physiological causes, disorders of the brain and other organs, or the appearance in the body of harmful substances.
Treatment consists in discovering and removing causes, and our procedure will be different according to as we believe those causes to be of physiological Or psychological order. For example, we should treat weeping due to the explosion of a tear-shell by administering substances which eliminate the poisonous gas, while we should strive to comfort the patient mourning for the loss of a loved relative.